OMNI WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #149, OCTOBER 25, 2023

OMNI WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #149, OCTOBER 25, 2023 

Laurence Shoup.  US Wars for Empire and the Council of Foreign Relations.

Convergence and Work for Peace

Meehan Crist.  Beware Rising Temperatures Leading to Violence

NukeWatch.  Wars Increase Warming and Risk Nuclear War

Understanding Our Situation.  You Ask Yourself, How Did We Get Into So Many Wars?  Here’s one part of the puzzle.

Laurence H. Shoup.  “Giving War a Chance.”  Monthly Review (May 2022).       Shoup’s review of Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict by Elbridge A. Colby offers rich revelations regarding US preparations for war and war strategy.  The essay is brief but so much is packed into short space, I will mention only the opening.   There Shoup rejects two books published by two high level representatives of the US ruling elite.  Both books connect with the Council of Foreign Relations, which has been “foremost in setting US imperial grand strategy.”
    Kenneth M. Pollock’s 2002 book, The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq, was published by CFR.  The book asserted “a number of lies to justify the invasion and occupation” of Iraq, including the allegations that Iraq threatened the world with weapons of mass destruction and that the invasion would be “an enormous boon” for the US.
     Yale UP published Strategy of Denial by Elbridge A. Colby in 2021.  The director of YUP, John Donatich, is “a longtime CFR member,” and Colby became a member in 2016, and was a high official in Donald Trump’s Pentagon.
     Strategy of Denial“provides an opportunity to concretely observe how the monopoly capitalist ruling class is preparing the people of the United States for what could be a catastrophic world war.  The book is comparable to Pollock’s in that its purpose is exactly the same: magnifying threats and increasing fears to build support …for a possible war” particularly against China but also Russia, including “if necessary, nuclear” (pp. 18-19).

If you want a quick appraisal of some of the US war-makers, you’ll like Shoup’s short essay.

STOP MILITARIZED RESPONSES TO GLOBAL WARMING
Meehan Crist.  “Let’s get out from under the carbon military boot print.”   :Urban Ramblings ,June 21, 2023..     Editor.  Mronline.org (7-4=23). 

Empire, Environment, Imperialism, WarAmericas, Europe, Russia, Ukraine, United StatesNewswire

In March last year, U.S. author Meehan Crist wrote the following in the London Review of Books,
One of the worst outcomes of the war in Ukraine would be an increasingly militarised response to climate breakdown, in which Western armies, their budgets ballooning in the name of “national security” seek to control not only the outcome of conflicts but the flow of energy, water, food, key minerals and other natural resources. One does not have to work particularly hard to imagine how barbarous that future would be.

Crist’s point is simply to describe the world we already have, but a bit more so; and her prediction is exactly what is happening.

·        The U.S. has raised military spending to $858 billion this year; up from $778 billion in 2020.

·        France has announced an increase from a projected E295 billion to E413 billion in the next seven years (an average of E59 billion a year).

·        German spending is rising sharply, from E53 billion in 2021 to  E100 billion in 2022 and is set to go further.

·        Japan aims to double its military spending by 2028 and is also debating whether to start deploying nuclear weapons.

·        In the UK, the government’s aim to increase military spending from 2.1% of GDP to 2.5% by 2030 comes on the back of what is already among the highest per capita military spends in the world.

·        NATO, the core alliance of the Global North, already accounted for 55.8% of global military spending in 2021 before any of these increases.

·        Other direct U.S. allies—with a mutual defence pact—accounted for another 6.3%.

·        So, the direct U.S.- centred military alliances account for three fifths of global military spending and yet they are now raising it further at unprecedented rates. These are the world’s dominant imperial powers, acting in concert to sustain a “rules based international order” in which the rules are written in, and to suit, the Global North in general and Washington in particular.

[Relevance to Ukraine War:  I’m looking for a calculation of the CO2 produced by these wars, and Biden added a full Carrier Battle Group augmented by a second carrier, and the carriers’ arms could include nuclear!  --D]