Provisional
Truth |
Essays | October 2006, Revised April 27, 2007
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Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace - 1984 Redux
It's likely
that America's military spending has surpassed $12 Trillion since the
end of World War II. Add another $4 Trillion for interest on the
national debt that has resulted from that military spending.
In
2006 (fiscal year), the total cost of America's military
spending exceeded $885 Billion, which includes veterans'
benefits and retirement and interest on the potion of
national debt, but not including the roughly $40 Billion for
Homeland Security. It also does not include our
off-balance-sheet forays into Iraq and Afghanistan which
likely adds another $500 Billion in the last five years.
This staggering sum equates to about $9,000 per American
household, this year alone. What's in your wallet? Would an
additional $9,000 help? Make a dent in those prescription
costs at Walgreen's? Get junior through another year in
college?
Clearly in 2006, six decades after naming the U.S.S.R.
public enemy number one, beginning the cold war and
inaugurating the national security state, as Gore Vidal
describes it, Americans have been scared into believing
these expenditures are necessary for our survival –
perpetual war (and preparation for war) for perpetual peace.
As
you remember, “War is Peace” is one of three paradoxical
slogans which George Orwell's 1984 inhabitants of
totalitarian Oceania accept as truth, an example of
“newspeak.” Continual warfare in that imaginary land is the
method by which the Party – Oceania's ruling class -
disposes of excess resources or diverts the product
of human labor away from that which would otherwise increase
or enhance the standard of living (which in turn could
dilute Party power over its subjects).
In
Orwell's Oceania, war ceases to exist for the masses of
people, its continuity guaranteeing the permanence and
perpetuity of the present order, hence “war is peace.” By
creating artificial fear and hate of an enemy, “the Party”
provided an excuse for its social failures –
shortages of food, consumer products, housing - because, as
perpetual war became the economic underpinning of the
nation, its subjects were kept busy producing goods that
would not improve their standard of living, but instead
would be destroyed on the battlefields, necessitating
continuous replacement.
Thus perpetual war not only kept the population employed and
busy, albeit barely above subsistence level, it also
encouraged a “siege mentality” in which hatred of the enemy
and love for the government's protection were social
norms.
Eminent historian Charles A. Beard (1874-1948) described in
1947 this state of “perpetual war for perpetual peace,”
coining a phrase which
became a prescient prediction of United States' foreign
policy from the close of World War II.
Sixty years ago, as America embarked upon an unprecedented
peacetime military buildup, later described as the
military-industrial complex in Eisenhower's warning upon
leaving office, we had the Evil Empire, Joe Stalin's and
Nikita Kruschev's U.S.S.R. as our ever-ready foil, which
represented an eternal threat upon which to base our huge
defense expenditures.
Like Superman, or any superhero, it seems the United States
must have at least one nemesis, an archenemy, and several
lesser enemies, to define the essence of our existence. In
all real and imagined examples of Good versus Evil, the more
evil the enemy the more good the hero appears (imagine
Superman without his Lex Luther).
A
superpower's greatest risk – greatest “failure” – is to
become irrelevant, unnecessary, in the greater scheme of
world affairs, other than as buyers of inexpensive consumer
goods, as easily could happen - in the view of the neocons - to the United States in the absence of a credible threat by
a credible enemy.
It almost
did happen to the United States in 1989
when the Berlin Wall fell and the former Soviet
Union began its so indecorous withdrawal from the eternal cosmic
battle.
For the first time since 1946, the national security state
found itself without an archenemy. All that
military-industrial complex going to waste with no one save
our old friend Manuel Noriega to pick on in Panama.
Godless liberal doves immediately began yammering about
"Peace Dividends" resulting from an abundance of tax dollars
no longer necessary to defeat the Evil Empire.
In that rare instance, the god-fearing conservative hawks
who own and run this country had only one option: in the
absence of evil, they had to create it.
As luck would have it for the god-fearing, conservative,
hawkish neocons, in early August 1990 Saddam Hussein invaded
Kuwait, roiling world oil markets and sending crude prices
soaring again to the $40-barrel level not seen in more than
a decade. Here was a
new
enemy, at least one that possibly jeopardized truth, justice
and the American way and our undeniable economic freedom to
drive and shop at will.
But
here's the rub.
Saddam thought he had a green light - permission - to “liberate” Kuwait
after our Iraqi ambassador, speaking for Secretary of State
James K. Baker III, told Hussein, our “friend” in the 1980s
when he was fighting Iran and the despised Ayatolla, the
United States
had no interest in its border dispute with Kuwait.
Gotcha! Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm became Gulf
War I as a no-doubt confused Saddam Hussein saw his forces
routed in a matter of weeks. But the deed was done, and, as
we had to be continually wary of that wily Saddam, it was no
time to diminish military spending. So much for the Peace
Dividend.
It never materialized despite President Clinton's best
efforts as American defense spending continued apace without
the Russians and Americans returned to the freeways and
shopping malls during that golden decade.
So
today we have an undeclared war on terrorism, now coming
upon five years of increased military spending and no closer
to capturing the supposed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.
Yes, Osama bin Laden still roams the badlands of Afghanistan
or Pakistan, while our attention has been diverted, first to
an impotent Saddam Hussein, and next, as one already can
hear the sabres rattling, to Iran.
But the War on Terrorism is only an undercard, as Iraq,
possibly Iran and -why not? - North Korea - that wacky “Axis
of Evil,” provide America something to practice upon while
we await our next great adversary, much the same way that
Terra-Man, Metallo and the Toyman merely were minor
annoyances to the Man of Steel, while he awaited some new,
Lex-Luther-like arch-enemy to reveal itself.
And our next great superpower adversary? China, of course.
Some already are willing to confer archenemy status upon
China, with a standing army of at least 3 million troops,
its first-strike nuclear capability and its growing economy,
oil consumption and middle class. America will spot China a
decade, two at the most, however, so the Peoples Republic
may acquire significantly more of our national debt than it
owns today, to raise the stakes, so to speak.
Only then will we truly have in China a worthy archenemy,
our new and long-term
“most-favored-nemesis.”
You think I'm kidding? Here's Robert Reich, former Secretary
of Labor under President Clinton, in January 2006 on
National Public Radio's Marketplace:
"As China grows - at the current rate it's growing, in
twenty or thirty years - and
becomes the number one largest economy in the
world, I think China may
become our nemesis."
Mr. Reich believes it could
be a generation before China reaches most favored adversary
status, but at the rate America is importing big box store
merchandise (and soon automobiles) and at the rate China is
buying our Treasury debt with all those dollars it gets
stuck with in return and increasing its annual oil
consumption, perhaps even 20 years may be a stretch.
Stay tuned.
Perpetual war for perpetual peace. How did George
Orwell know?
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