All hat, no cattle

American police, equipped with untold quantities of military-grade hardware, trained constantly, cheered endlessly, and almost always protected from accountability when they commit abusive errors, are expected to do one job with minimum dedication and skill: protect the innocent from deranged attackers even when at risk of harm to themselves.

It must come as a shock to many of our fellow citizens to see how the Uvalde cops rolled up in an armored car, kitted out in all sorts of weaponry, but couldn't stop a bumbling teenager from murdering children because they came upon a locked door and didn’t have the key.

That’s nothing compared to the cognitive dissonance that will descend upon us shortly when we realize the same phenomenon is taking place in Ukraine where US and NATO tough guys stand around in a variety of ethnic cowboy hats, egging on other guys to keep getting chewed up by the Russian military machine.

The bipartisan Washington duopoly that pours $700 billion worth of our resources annually into military preparedness lectures everyone on earth about what they had better do—or else because standing behind the threats is a vast array of high-tech weaponry. Oddly enough, that team is getting its ass handed to it by “a gas station masquerading as a country.” Just as on the domestic stage, we’re being told that all is well because our cops are lumbering through the streets with hundreds of pounds of Robocop fetish gear.

The latest breathless narrative is that M777 howitzers or the new batch of totally cool Javelin missiles or some other mystical sounding piece of equipment will turn the tide, just like in the war-porn movies we gobble up.

We’re promised that those trillion-dollar piles of weapons will keep disobedient foreigners from getting ideas and threatening “democracy.” Turns out even pesky sub-humans who haven’t discovered “freedom” and the “rules-based international order” can acquire a bit of agency.

The Uvalde cops and assorted Texas elected officials tried to answer questions about the elementary school debacle by emitting endlessstreams of word salad about the “terrible tragedy” and the valiant efforts of “officers on the scene” who “brought things under control.” They desperately attempt to deflect attention away from the utter and ignominious failure of the heroic cops to actually take a risk and stop the slaughter of children.

Similarly, Sullivan, Blinken, foggy Joe, the laughable Ursula von der Leyen, Boris Johnson, Scholz, Stoltenberg, and their clapping seals in the entire western media universe assume heroic poses on the battlements of their respective capitals. They survey the landscape and decide never to retreat an inch in the Donbass where some 10 thousand Ukrainian troops are about to face the choice between annihilation or surrender.

Victory is just around the corner, though, and the Zelenskiy government will soon be pushing back against the paper Russian tiger, whose demoralized troops are short of food, running out of ammo, and about to desert for a nice job in Barcelona. (I actually heard David Frum predict this on a webinar.)

Meanwhile, the Uvalde cops will be storming the child-assassin—as soon as they get snipers, armor, back-up, and their Starbucks orders. Don’t try to interfere, or we’ll tase you.

 

Bankruptcy

 

Back at the time of the collapse of the USSR, some commentators claimed that the West had driven the Soviets into bankruptcy by escalating the arms race beyond their means while simultaneously making sure that the Afghan war continued to drain them. All that unsustainable spending, pundits insisted, had brought the rickety Soviet system crashing down into a heap.

It may be time to ask whether the tables have been turned upon us.

President Biden has asked Congress for additional monies for the DoD, the better to prepare ourselves for a stand-off with Russia in Europe. Congress, never particularly reticent when it comes to military pork for members’ districts, promptly insisted on giving him more than he asked for.

Biden’s proposed $813 billion Pentagon bill dwarfs all previous budgets for arms and warfare, and Republicans promptly attacked it as too little. While gummint programs often come in for the criticism that they simply throw money at a problem, there is a sudden 180 pivot when the same approach is used in this particular sphere.

I remember attending a Pentagon briefing in 1981 when the incoming Reagan Administration was boosting the budget numbers left behind by Carter. The briefing book literally had the Carter numbers crossed out and new percentage increases penciled in over each item, giving the strong impression that the only thought in anyone’s mind when they got the checkbook out was, “More!”

The never-never question of, “How are we to pay for all this?” remains off limits given that, by long-established custom, it is only asked of programs that improve people’s lives such as Social Security or transportation infrastructure. But under no circumstances must this query be put to those demanding new funds for weaponry.

However, it might be a relevant inquiry these days as we witness inflation reach double-digits and our trade deficit with China (tomorrow’s enemy!) explode.

Biden and his neocon war council seem confident that the United States can stage confrontations with large and small rival powers such as Russia, China, Iran (perhaps toss in India and Pakistan as well if need be), wage economic war upon them, and emerge unscathed.

Biden’s guys are happily ensconced in a virtual world dating to about 1992 (or perhaps 1946) in which the U.S. rules the four winds and the seven seas, dictates terms, and punishes renegades.

That world has come and gone, but if you believe that perceptions matter more than reality, the Golden Age can be summoned back with magical thinking and some good old Edward Bernays-style PR.

After all, Ronald Reagan made us “feel good about America” after the hardships of the 60s and 70s, and for four decades that has stood us in good stead. We recovered from the so-called Vietnam syndrome and returned to our rightful place as the beacon of freedom and democracy around the world, as witnessed by our efforts to promote both in Panama, El Salvador, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. As long as we feel good, everything will work out fine.

Like Napoleon, we—or least Messrs. Blinken and Sullivan—believe in the historical mission of advancing democracy and free-market capitalism on the point of our nuclear-tipped lances. The neocons, true to their original Trotskyist roots, have led an ideological battle inspired by their revolutionary beliefs and backed up with the vast coercive resources of the world’s costliest military machine.

Whether it’s the best prepared or most competent remains to be seen as the neocon zealots push us ever closer to open battle with Russia on the European front. War ideas that were once far-fetched edge ever closer to reality as the Biden leadership shows no signs of discovering a reverse gear despite the evidence that Plan A hasn’t gone so well. We now face the prospect of a direct face-off.

But notwithstanding their crushing triumph in the information war, the U.S. and its western allies haven’t found a winning formula to reverse Russian advances in the field. Meanwhile, the economic war launched with vast confidence that the Russian economy (“a gas station masquerading as a country”—John McCain) would promptly collapse and force Putin to his septuagenarian knees has generated a boomerang effect that has only just begun to be felt here at home.

Americans are currently enthusiastic about the nobility of the Ukrainian cause and happy to display blue and yellow face-paint and donate to the widows-and-orphans charities springing up.

Of course, a couple of years back people were clapping out their windows for the heroic nurses tending to Covid patients, the same nurses who are now the object of hostile comments at the grocery store for their role in the “fake” epidemic and its inconvenient restrictions.

How long will Ukraine solidarity survive in the face of seven-dollar-a-gallon gas? Or apples suddenly costing $3 a pound instead of $1.75?

No doubt all we’ll need is tighter restrictions on “pro-Russian” propaganda on Twitter and YouTube to revive that fighting spirit of sacrifice. After all, the defense of Ukrainian agency and the preservation of its options for NATO membership are certainly worth canceling that family vacation or moving into a two-room flat.

Given that the US of A is the greatest country on earth with an awesome fighting force and the best of everything, we’ll be up to the challenges facing us once they’re explained by credible leaders like Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Mitch McConnell, and Donald Trump. 

The American economy dwarfs most others and certainly will respond with resilience even though its captains of industry long ago packed up the nation’s factories and shipped them to Mexico, Bangladesh, and China. But we have Facebook, Google, and many iProducts and dozens of billionaires each worth ten times the net worth of ancient Mesopotamia. We are indestructible.

Nothing can go wrong, and all will be well.

Three Wars

 

Three simultaneous wars are underway in Ukraine.

The current score is: 1-1-1: one win, one loss, one stalemate.

The information war

The U.S. is winning the war for the narrative hands down. The entire western hemisphere sees Russia as an unprovoked aggressor invading a weak, sovereign neighbor and concurs that it is an outrageous act that jeopardizes world peace. The crushing repudiation of the Russians at the United Nations this week is an apt expression of that consensus.

It is no accident that the country that essentially invented advertising and public relations (the U.S.) should excel at shaping the terms of public debate and public emotion. The Russians are rank amateurs and have paid almost no attention to the art of convincing others of their case, probably assuming that it was a lost cause. They must therefore fall back upon facts on the ground.

The ground war

Which is exactly where everything is unfolding as Russia anticipated with some minor surprises of the sort that are inevitable in war. Tales of Ukrainian resistance and valor will be short-lived. The much-discussed delays in the Russian advance are likely more to do with their decision to destroy as little as possible of Ukraine so that the parts not to be absorbed into the Russian sphere can recover rapidly. The optimistic tales emanating from the informational apparatus [see above] are mostly wishful thinking. The Americans predicted that the war would occur and announced that NATO would not be able to stop it. They were right.

The economic war

This one is a stalemate, and we should not start filling in our scorecards for at least six months to a year. Russia is not Iran, which could be (and was) kicked around and driven into penury by economic warfare, boycotts, and direct and third-party sanctions. In this case, however, many tools are available to Russia for retaliation. The extraordinary move to sanction the Russian central bank and freeze (or seize) its assets will have consequences. As long as there is a chance of ratcheting down the hostilities and limiting the damage, Russia may hold off. On the other hand, if de-escalation is not on the horizon, that war—unlike the bombs and mortar shells—may hit us directly.  

Calming Our Fears

 

Given our frailties as bipeds, we seek protection from harm. We go to considerable lengths to be reassured that we are secure in our persons, our streets, our homes. But as women generally know much better than men, the safety that we feel is based on a pretty big illusion, one that sets us up for psychological manipulation. Here’s what I mean:

I got mugged some years ago and sustained a rather harrowing injury. Once the initial shock had passed, my medical needs attended to, and the concerned friends sent away, I experienced a period of trauma that manifested as agoraphobia although no one called it that at the time. I could not leave home alone and was uncomfortable walking the half-block to my bus stop in the middle of the day. I could not stop thinking that around the next corner, there could be someone ready to come at me with a club.

I was right—there could. Yes, of course, there was no such person. I say “of course” because that’s the psychic contract we sign up to as participants in society during normal times—the comforting assumption that no one is out to get us. But it was precisely the “of course” that I could not grasp. I had seen through the veil of our consensual reality and understood that there is, in fact, nothing stopping our fellows from battering us to death and making off with our stuff. Nothing, that is, except the general agreement that we won’t. Cops exist to discourage aggression, but they arrive only after it has occurred in almost all cases and thus play a merely retributive and punitive role.

What really keeps us safe is the deep, unconscious commitment to play nice with others that most of us mostly observe most of the time.

As women know, this agreement only goes so far, and they live with the permanent threat that the contract doesn’t fully cover them in the minds of too many large, aggressive bipeds. But I digress.

Notorious, alarming crimes undermine our sense that this protective social fabric remains intact. In our case here in New York City, nothing violates our confidence in the safety of our dense, urban environment like the sudden platform shove that puts someone in the path of a speeding subway train (as occurred January 18). We circulate constantly amidst thousands of fellow riders and pedestrians and shudder when standing near those terrifying engines to think that we are only inches away from its death-dealing irons. We’re right—we are.

The publicity attached to a rash of subway-related crimes, along with an uptick in deadly shootings, resulted in the installation of an ex-cop as our new mayor. Although a dissident during his time in uniform—especially over the topic of racism in the force—Mayor Adams so far has the very selective support of the NYPD as manifested in his role at the week-long memorials and funerals of the two officers killed on Jan. 21 when responding to a domestic violence call.

I have come to know a number of DV officers who have a difficult job and, clearly, a dangerous one. In the best of cases, they defuse potentially violent situations and mobilize resources to alleviate their underlying causes. One of the deceased, Jason Rivera, 22, joined the force after witnessing what he considered inappropriate police behavior applied to Hispanic youth like himself and thought he could do better, which makes his demise even more lamentable.

That said, it is an irony and indeed a disrespect to his memory that many now use his death politically to clamor for an end to all criticism of the way policing is done in our city and country. Alvin Bragg, the new Manhattan borough district attorney, campaigned and got elected on the idea that the current bail system is overly punitive and locks people up because they’re poor. After the dual NYPD deaths, Bragg’s plans were immediately attacked by all and sundry, including the new governor, who waved the bloody shirt of the dead officers. The D.A., said one commentator, has to “march in lockstep” with the NYPD, a blatant call to eliminate what little civilian control now exists over our $6 billion-a-year police force.

Right-thinking liberals who find Trump appalling mostly concur with that line of thinking, the same way they forgot about the rule of law once the Twin Towers came tumbling down. When it comes to the plea to “keep us safe,” there is little daylight between the red and blue teams. Demagogues everywhere know this and rise to popularity with pledges to toss out the rulebook (Bolsonaro, Duterte). If their crime-fighting tactics include dropping bodies from helicopters, most of us, if frightened enough, won’t object.

However, the get-tough approach doesn’t include everyone either, and that is another aspect of our inner totalitarian that gets ignored. Consider the case of Lauren Smith-Fields, 23, found dead in her Bridgeport, Connecticut, apartment on Dec. 12. She had been with a man met online who reported her dead; the autopsy reported fentanyl, alcohol, and other substances as the cause of death. But no one phoned or visited the next of kin to inform them that the young lady was deceased. They found out by calling her building superintendent after she failed to respond to messages.

Even stranger, the Bridgeport police did not interview the man who was with her when she died, nor did they collect forensic evidence from the site. Family members who later arrived found a used condom, a pill, and other evidence that no detective had bothered to retrieve.

Would it surprise us to know that Ms. Smith-Fields was African-American and that her date was white? Would it surprise us to know that the white man was a friend of the detective assigned to the case? Would it surprise us that another African-American female was also found dead in Bridgeport on the same day and that her family was also not notified?

Would police have proceeded in the same way if Ms. Smith-Fields were a 23-year-old white woman, like, says, Gaby Petito, and if her online date had been a black dude 15 years her senior?

The get-tough-on-crime meme doesn’t really have an answer to these questions because leaving enforcement entirely to those in uniform inevitably empowers all the prejudices that they bring to the job or develop over time. But even while recognizing injustices and the historical roots of the over-policing/ under-policing of minority communities that persist to this day, most New Yorkers will cheer Mayor Adams’ tired menu of get-tough policies, which are almost guaranteed not to work—if indeed the goal is to reduce violent crime. They will work, however, to reassure people psychologically that they will be kept safe and that real tough guys are in charge.

For example, Adams has proposed to add the category of “dangerousness” to the criteria for granting or refusing bail to detained suspects. That sounds reasonable until we examine the research evidence that judges routinely think black defendants are dangerous and white ones are not even when their records and pending charges are comparable.

Sometimes, an accused offender out on bail will commit a horrific crime, and the Murdoch yellow press immediately trumpets the tragedy as cause to lock up everyone within 5 miles just for good measure. Meanwhile, the contribution of our punitive prison system to maintaining the levels of violence in our society never gets a second look.

Adams also wants to remove Fifth Amendment protections from 16- and 17-year-olds arrested on gun charges to coerce them to rat out whoever provided them with the weapon. Aside from the irony that our gun-worshipping culture refuses to recognize the very real dangers that minority youth experience and punishes them severely for doing what white Texans brag about openly, Adams’s plan opens the door for new abuses like the case of the Central Park 5 in which innocent kids were browbeaten into false confessions and sent away for over a decade. But New Yorkers then wanted a resolution of the fear-inducing rape case, and not much has changed today.

M. A. Kaishian writes in Slate:

Adams’ focus on illegal guns comes as New York State—and New York City particularly—makes legal gun ownership nearly impossible. There are many reasons why people, including minors, choose to carry guns. In 2018 and 2019, the Center for Court Innovation interviewed 330 young people in New York City about guns, violence, and proposed solutions to violence. Eighty-eight percent had a family member or friend who had been shot and 81% had been shot or shot at.

We can send these young people off to long stints in upstate prisons, but violence and particularly gun violence will not be affected. But people will feel safer, which is what we want. Subway riders interviewed in the media repeatedly insist that we need more patrol officers on the trains. But six officers were assigned to the station where the fatal shoving incident occurred.

Our public discourse around crime is emotionally charged and cannon fodder for politicians to swagger. But once fear get a grip on us, we are incapable of acting rationally or, as some would say, applying The Science™.

While we succumb with depressing regularity to appeals to our anxiety about personal safety at home, the neocon establishment in Washington is eagerly drumming up the international version. Despite no real changes on the ground, we are suddenly assured (and not permitted to doubt) that the Russians are on the verge of staging an invasion of Ukraine and that they have massed the famous “100,000 troops on the border” in preparation for doing so. While one could question whether troop movements thousands of miles away from our national borders truly place us in danger, the assumptions of our Cold War upbringing kick in smoothly and convince us that, yes, intra-European disputes are our business.

Though our ideological enemies are long departed, Russia remains, in the collective brain, the land of dangerous autocrats. Therefore, NATO must march relentlessly eastward, and Poland, Romania, and Hungary must bristle with the latest weapons systems pointing at scary Moscow. Otherwise, Russians are likely to disembark into Sarah Palin’s back yard or, alternatively, take over Vermont’s power supply with Donald Trump’s collusion.

The surreal madness at work in this latest round of propaganda would be amusing if it were not promptly swallowed by the thought leaders of the blue team and the bulk of the managerial-professional class who constitute the Democrat base. They continue to insist that Trump was a Kremlin stooge in the face of no evidence. (These are the same people eager to censor unofficial Covid statements from Spotify and elsewhere.)

Our fears have taken over; our emotions rule. We seek new scapegoats, depending on our colors, Trumpian meatheads for some, woke snowflakes for others. All join hands to “support our troops” and their commanding generals who now flail about in confusion trying to figure out what to do next.

It would take a social historian much cleverer than I to tease out what on earth is happening in our disturbed polity. But it is clear enough that we have real grounds for fears that go far beyond someone surprising us on the street with a bat. While we hate on Joe Rogan or books about the Holocaust or Vladimir Putin or the Chinese who may shellac American athletes in the Olympics, we pose no threat to those making our future dangerous as hell.

(If you wish to receive alerts of future posts here, write me at <tfrasca@yahoo.com>.)

U.S. heading for its “Suez” moment

— Both parties collude to drive the country into war(s) it cannot win. —

As we have learned nothing from the mass bamboozlement that led to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, everyone and her brothers are obediently mouthing the security state’s declarations that Russia wants to invade Ukraine. This faith in the mouthpieces of our armament industries’ monetary interests is touching; plus, the believers in this Revealed Truth from our masters can go to bed mocking the conspiracists and nutters of the [choose one] blue/red team, which no doubt is very calming.

Our president and his national security team say that Russia is on the verge of invading Ukraine. What happens in a few weeks if no such invasion occurs? Will Biden et al. claim that they faced down the weak-kneed Russkies successfully by a vigorous combination of finger-wagging, solemn assurances, and threats to cut off Vladimir Putin’s allowance? Perhaps an emergency measure to send another $50 billion over to the Pentagon will get hustled through a suddenly unified Congress.

Meanwhile, the Russians’ demand to revamp the security architecture in Europe, including a NATO retreat from its borders, goes unanswered. Perhaps that is the idea—distract with a non-existent threat and escape the pressure to get serious about negotiations.

If so, it won’t do much but postpone the inevitable, which is straight for a “Suez moment.”

The destruction unleashed by World War 2 ended European colonialism and the long primacy of Britain and France in world affairs. Their postwar decline became painfully clear to both the old bwana powers when Egyptian President Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956.

Britain, France, and Israel thought they could march in and reverse Nasser’s decision to claim control over a piece of Egyptian territory. But Eisenhower, for a variety of reasons, told the invaders to go home and backed up his suggestion with threats of economic sanctions that none of the three could afford. They obeyed. It was a sign of who had emerged stronger from the war and which countries were barely intact.

Suez, as became clear later, was “the last fling of the imperial dice,” at least as far as Britain and France were concerned. (Israel, meanwhile, continues the tradition in a new form.) Britain’s prime minister Anthony Eden was forced out two months later as the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. relegated the rest of the world to the role of chorus.

Our current bosses are hurtling toward a similar rude awakening despite the array of shiny armaments at the disposal of our top-heavy military establishment. Aside from successful invasions of tiny Caribbean islands (Grenada) or devastating bombing runs over defenseless troops with no air cover (Iraq), it’s hard to identify any significant U.S. military success in decades with the possible exception of the smashing of the ISIS franchise in Iraq with the help of the hated Iranians and their local allies.

No one doubts that Americans can destroy cities and reduce whole countries to rubble, but direct combat of the sort being contemplated is another animal entirely. The parade of failed generals now hibernating comfortably on defense-contractor corporate boards might attest to that.

Whether in Ukraine on the Taiwan Straits, U.S. policymakers are in the grips of delusion.

Does anyone doubt that Russian troops fighting on their own frontiers would have a massive psychological motivation that might be lacking among NATO’s untested soldiers? Does anyone really mean to find out?

Should we doubt the nationalistic fervor that would drive however many millions of soldiers the Chinese might set to work on reclaiming Taiwan? Is it worth accumulating heroic war stories to learn the answer?

We have lived for many years under the assumption that neither of those countries would dare to confront the United States given the arsenals of nukes that stand ready to rain down upon them. If one listens to the statements coming out of Beijing and Moscow, however, one gets quite a different impression: that the two powers feel directly threatened NOW and are willing to call the Americans’ bluff.

Does Washington’s policy elite really want to get into a nuclear showdown over an island 10,000 miles away or a failed state in the middle of Europe?

(Incidentally, watch any mainstream news about Ukraine and ask yourself how often the Russians are quoted offering their views on what is happening, should happen, or how to defuse the situation. Of course, all U.S. news is fair and balanced—between Republican Americans and Democrat Americans.)

According to some of those, escalation up to and including World War III is just what we need. Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker said in early December the U.S. should consider “first-use nuclear action” staged from the Black Sea. 

In case we think such nutters are only found in the GOP, Wicker was joined by Evelyn N. Farkas, a Pentagon official during the Obama administration, who advocates “readying military forces to deter Putin and, if necessary, prepare for war.” Minor issues like attempts to undermine the outcome of a presidential election fade into irrelevancy when the two sides link arms, cast their gaze toward foreign enemies, and rattle nuclear sabers.

This is a dangerous game, and yet the assorted neocons that populate the U.S. foreign policy apparatus march in lockstep, confident that U.S. domination of the world over the last 75 years—and especially the last 30—is destined to continue indefinitely. They seem not to notice that our country is profoundly weakened by internal divisions, stripped of its industrial base, run by Sovietesque gerontocrats who rule a populace who believe in very little of what they say and even less of what they do.

Underlying the strategic myopia of what renegade CIA analyst Ray McGovern calls the MICIMATT (Military-Industrial-Counter-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think Tank Complex), sometimes called “The Blob,” is a philosophical view of geopolitics and indeed of humanity itself that rejects any possibility of cooperative coexistence among the peoples of the world. The concept that China and Russia might be allowed to pursue their interests in relative peace and that a modus vivendi might be reached among all the heavily armed world powers to tackle other urgent global problems makes no appearance in the encyclopedic textbooks of their incestuous think tanks.  

No doubt such zero-sum thinking has been the norm for millenia of human history, the motivation for its endless destructive wars and periodic bouts of pitiless slaughter. Therefore, with such encouraging outcomes, we should keep doing the same thing?

We, or at least they, seem to think that nothing has changed since ancient times when the Romans cast about constantly to see where the natives might be getting restless and sent out punitive patrols to rein them in, kill a few thousand, and restart the flow of tribute. They feared allowing their subjects any real independence or permitting encroachments into the empire’s far-flung territories by rivals. That’s how Washington thinks. They speak as if failure to dominate means being dominated as if the world were a vast international S&M dungeon with no room for “vanilla” behavior of any kind.

While rival blue and red camps brawl in Congress and soon will do so on the streets as well, a curious unanimity prevails between them when facing the prospect of disobedient foreign actors flexing their local muscles. Democrats and Republicans alike hasten to undermine presidents who fail to maintain a properly belligerent attitude toward our official enemies; this applies to both Trump and Biden and especially to the permanent foreign policy/ security apparatus that surrounds them.

The only danger to our blobiferous MICIMATT parallel state is the frightening idea that peace may break out and obviate the need for more trillions deposited at the Pentagon for distribution among friendly industries and lobbyists.

The incapacity of our leadership to contemplate any approach other than intimidation and demands for obedience is not merely a function of narrowness of vision or Beltway groupthink, though these are real enough. It is also the expression on the world stage of our 40-year surrender to the neoliberal article of faith that markets, and markets alone, must determine our course of action in all spheres of life.

Such ideological enslavement gave cover to the titans of financial power and their friends in elite circles such that when they acted to make themselves immensely rich at the expense of most everyone else, they could convince themselves they were being smart. Did the greed come first or the ideas justifying it? Does it matter?

Did Bill Clinton really believe his own rhetoric that inviting China into the World Trade Organisation and enabling the Chinese Communist Party to set millions of wage slaves in competition with the American industrial heartland would convert China into a democratic capitalist imitation of ourselves? Maybe he did, and maybe he didn’t. The industrialists and financiers drooling over the profit opportunities offered by crushing U.S. workers were all too happy to pretend to believe it whether they did or not. No one paused to consider the long-term consequences because the quarterly profit statements were rosy, and that is enough because Markets.

Do members of Congress really think the U.S. needs to escalate war fever against Russia and China, or do their role as recipients of legal bribes from the MICIMATT dictate their shared worldview? Northrup Grumman doesn’t care.

We have gone so far down this road that the system is incapable of righting itself. Biden, the product of a lifetime of toadying to these corporate cowboys and parroting their justifications, is the perfect expression of our decadent and paralyzed state.

It is my belief that the U.S. will continue down the confrontational precipice with its two rivals and, in one form or another, sooner or later, lose, either little by little or all at once. I expect this process will take no more than five to seven years and that we will wake up by the end of the decade as no longer the world’s preeminent power.

The shock of taking our new place as the chastised victims of our leaders’ hubristic overreach will be something to behold and to experience. Once accomplished, a stimulating discussion about where we want to go next will be possible for the first time in living memory.

[Let me know if you would like email alerts of new posts.] <tfrasca@yahoo.com>

Kazakstan: Two (and a half) views

The coverage of recent events in Kazakstan falls roughly into two camps:

•          People rose up against a dictatorial, corrupt regime and were mowed down by the country’s brutal security forces, assisted and backstopped by Russian troops.
•          Foreign intelligence services cooked up an attempted “color revolution” to install a West-friendly regime in Kazakstan, threaten Russia along a huge central Asian border, and simultaneously break up the Chinese Belt & Road Initiative.

At the risk of sounding like a Christian Democrat, I propose that both are partly true, and therefore each is incomplete.

Having seen a bit of life in the post-Soviet republics up close, I am immediately pre-disposed to think that demonstrations, riots, street fighting, and even the seizure of government buildings reflect pent-up anger and frustration among the populace at decades of blatant corruption among the self-serving elites along with the elites’ failure to address basic issues of survival and well-being for the majority, even in countries pulling in vast amounts of ready cash (e.g., Kazakstan, Azerbaijan, both oil producers). In my experience, these countries tend to operate on the assumption that state officeholders are nothing more than members of an organized mafia whose sole purpose is mutual enrichment and that no government function is to be performed in the absence of a bribe. 

My immediate apologies to long-suffering, honest bureaucrats in any of those countries—I’m sure you exist, and it can’t be an easy life.

If those are the terms, many citizens will patiently accede to them given the unlikelihood of gaining anything by not doing so. However, the implied exchange is that the state will function, keep a lid on the more grotesque forms of lawlessness, and make it possible to live modestly day to day if one has no particular ambitions beyond an adequate lunch. 

Something like a 100% increase in the price of fuel, then, blasts this social contract apart, and it should hardly surprise us that spontaneous and even violent outbursts followed when the Kazakstani authorities imposed it.

In such a case, one would expect to see clashes with cops, perhaps demonstrations that cannot be controlled, masses of people surrounding key government buildings, and, depending on how many firearms are circulating, a few potshots and casualties. Depending on how scared the regime is, deaths might amount to a handful (as in Chile’s demonstrations in recent years or several hundred (as in Myanmar, given the extreme unpopularity of the military coup-makers there).

What one would not expect in this scenario is news of armed bands attempting to seize the main airports, successfully in one case, especially if they appear to be well prepared and well supplied with small arms, logistical capabilities, and manpower. Nor would you expect the chief of national security, Karim Massimov, to order a pullback by airport defenders just hours before the assault takes place, as he is accused of doing. That is where the long-suffering-people-mowed-down-by-murderous-cops scenario doesn’t provide an adequate explanation.

There is enough evidence, even at this early stage, to suggest that popular unrest was utilized to unleash a deadly power struggle at the top of the very top-heavy Kazak ruling class. According to some knowledgeable observers, the two camps are, or were: a pro-Russian one represented by President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, and a Kazakophile-but-West-friendly tendency long dominated by former president Nursultan Nazarbayev, the erstwhile power behind the Kazak throne, so to speak.

Nazarbayev, while fulfilling all the clichés about Central Asian autocrats from the personality-cultish naming of the new capital after himself to his supposed plan to have his daughter Nariga inherit the presidency, also tilted quite noticeably in the direction of western oil companies and the governments that stand behind them. Nazarbayev, like Lukashenko in Belarus, attempted to balance the two hostile camps to extract maximum concessions from each. In our increasingly war-ready world, this turns out not to be a winning strategy.

Many accusations are flying over what and who exactly were involved in the two-day uprising, which probably put Tokayev’s life in danger and could shorten those of others. There will be ample opportunity to sort through the claims and accompanying evidence or lack of same. For now, we can keep in mind that the U.S. and its spook allies in Britain, perhaps Turkey, are entirely comfortable with utilizing all sorts of dubious and bloodthirsty elements, including the same jihadis whom we are supposedly at “war” with, to advance their immediate aims. We don’t know if they did, but we know that they would.

At the same time, it would be nice to hear—from those enthusiastic about the Russian role in suppressing the alleged coup—some occasional acknowledgement of the legitimate grievances of the Kazakstani people who have had no role in the governance of their country since the moment of its creation. If the Kazak elites had provided even the slightest opportunity for a democratic airing of grievances, they might have thought twice about ramming through a policy that threatened people’s survival and about how the average Kazakstani might react. A little democracy might have prevented the outbreak of deadly power games costing dozens of lives.

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Will Russia invade Ukraine? Yes, if they so choose.

 

After the collapse of the USSR, foreign policy senior wise man George Kennan warned against expanding NATO east toward the borders of Russia, calling it a “fateful error.” Kennan, who coined the term “containment,” which became the shorthand name for U.S. policy toward the USSR for decades, said that the crumbling of Soviet ideology could have led the new country in a positive direction. But providing its leaders with a new external enemy, he said, would “erode the nascent democracy.”

Kennan’s writings and comments in the late 1990s criticizing the expansion of NATO—which occurred in eight stages over 70 years such that the military alliance now comprises 30 countries—are full of dire predictions. Let’s see how many have come true:

NATO expansion, said Kennan, will:

. . . “inflame nationalistic, anti-western, and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion.” Check.

. . . “restore the atmosphere of cold war to east-west relations.” Check.

“. . . have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy.” Check.

“. . . impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.” Check.

In summary, said Kennan, “We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way.” Check.

The last statement is the one looming large over the several meetings Biden and Putin have held in recent weeks, including a call just a couple of days ago. A look at the map above shows what a juicy prize Ukraine would be as a front-line NATO member given the long border it shares with the new Evil Empire. Which Brookings intern wrote the memo assuring his fellow neocons that Russia would be okay with this?

If one squints one’s eyes and peers through the cloud of State Department/Pentagon/White House stenography emanating from our main news outlets, one can glimpse that poor old Joe is playing from a very weak hand. While issuing daily alarms over the Russkies’ nasty intentions toward Ukraine and warning it against taking military action, the U.S. can’t do anything much about a  Russian attack were it to occur and has said as much.

Experts largely agree that the Ukrainian military would collapse within hours of a Russian attack and that the Ukraine as a country might cease to exist. Impoverished refugees flooding toward the prosperous states of Europe is not a welcome scenario for the NATO allies, none of whom have a whit of influence over what the two big guys eventually decide to do in any case.

Biden and his spokespeople wave the threat of further sanctions against Russia were such an attack to take place, such as banning Russian banks from using the SWIFT messaging service to process financial transactions. To which the Russian response has been a version of “Oo, eek, we’re so skeered!”

German and Dutch leaders trying to keep their citizens from freezing this winter, on the other hand, might well be spooked by the prospect of losing easy access to Russian natural gas. Russia has plenty of customers in Asia for its products, and the Americans’ simultaneous campaigns against both it and China have thrown those two giants together in what is increasingly looking like a long-term partnership if not a downright alliance.

How did this come about? Are the Russians seeking to restore the czarist/Soviet empire and gobble up neighboring states? One would think so from the mainstream commentators showcased here.

Back to Kennan: “I think it is a tragic mistake,” he insisted in 1998. “There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves.”

On the Senate debate that occurred before that august body endorsed NATO expansion, Kennan said it was "superficial and ill-informed" and that he was "particularly bothered by the references to Russia as a country dying to attack Western Europe. Don't people understand? Our differences in the cold war were with the Soviet Communist regime. And now we are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove it.”

Who were the authors of this colossal blunder? Bloodthirsty neocon warriors like those who gathered around Bush II? No, in fact it was Bill Clinton and William Cohen, Madeleine Albright and Sandy Berger, egged on by Trent Lott and Joe Lieberman. That is, the reliably right-wing nutcases of the Republican Party boosting the most reactionary tendencies among the most war-loving Democrats. And our nation’s arms manufacturers no doubt were standing by with the needed lobbying and think-tank millions to encourage this scheme, so profitable for themselves.

Our media elites are incapable of injecting any balance into their reporting of the Ukrainian situation, which would at minimum include some nod to the Russians’ fear of encirclement by hostile military forces aiming nuclear weapons at their major cities with arrival times measured in the minutes. I recall a major international crisis of apocalyptic brinksmanship occurring in 1962 when the shoe was on the other foot.

Putin has made it clear in his public statements that the Russians are out of patience with NATO, with the U.S., and most particularly with the Ukrainians and are not in a forgiving mood. They have demanded written, legal guarantees not only that NATO will not expand further into Ukraine or anywhere else but to roll back the current status quo.

What’s different about this set of demands at this time is that the Russians are in a position to impose them. After all the NATO-inspired talk of military threats against Ukraine, the western powers are faced with a prophecy about to be self-fulfilled. Putin laid out their conditions for not acting and is not interested in verbal assurances given that the U.S. has proven itself not agreement-capable repeatedly (the Iran nuclear deal, various arms control treaties, Libya). The Russians say they are willing to talk but not forever, and by all appearances they are deadly serious.

There is a lot of speculation in the specialty press and blogosphere about what will happen, ranging from nothing to all-our war in Europe. All the scenarios are plausible, and nobody knows.

What is not in doubt is that the whole sorry mess could have been avoided if our leaders had opted for a different course 30 years ago. But that was impossible. Our political system and economy are so enslaved to the war-making industrial complex that belligerence and fear-mongering had to continue to drive U.S. attitudes toward the world because without them, many trillions of dollars might not continue to flow into the right pockets. 

Mr Kennan’s wise words never had a chance. Perhaps they will now that the chickens have come home to roost.

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