#2. WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS (WWW)
December
30, 2020
Two
Books on US Nuclear Weapons
Scott
Ritter. SCORPION KING: America's
Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons.
Scott Ritter. SCORPION
KING: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump. Clarity P, 2020.
Publisher’s
Description. Scorpion King:
America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump is a
history of America’s corrosive affair with nuclear weapons, and the failed
efforts to curb this radioactive ardor through arms control. The book’s title
refers to the allusion by Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the American atomic
bomb, to dueling scorpions when discussing the deadly nuclear rivalry between
the US and Soviet Union, and signals the dangers inherent in the resumption of
the perilous US drive for nuclear supremacy.
Providing a vivid and gripping A-Z
history of America’s deceptive use of arms control as a means of actually
furthering its quest for nuclear dominance, Ritter sheds light on a
contradictory US agenda little understood by the lay reader, while providing
sufficient detail and context to engage the specialist.
The Trump administration has
pulled out of one landmark arms control treaty, the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear
Forces treaty, and is threatening to let another, the 2010 New START treaty,
expire. The terrifying Cuban missile crisis of 1962 demonstrated the
apocalyptic folly of nuclear arsenals operating without limitation, and led to
reciprocal constraints that moderated the nuclear ambitions of both the US and
Soviet Union Those constraints, for the most part, no longer exist. The next
missile crisis could prove terminal for humanity.
“A comprehensive and illuminating account of
America’s paralyzing infatuation with nuclear weapons. This expanded
edition of Scott Ritter’s 2010 book drives home the point made in the
original: The ominous threat of Doomsday persists, with U.S. policymakers
unable to extricate themselves from the reckless pact with the devil made by
their predecessors more than a half-century ago.”
Originally published as Dangerous Ground.
FROM MAD TO MADNESS: Inside Pentagon Nuclear War Planning
BY Diana Johnstone, Paul H. Johnstone
DATE
OF PUB?
This deathbed memoir
by Dr. Paul H. Johnstone, former senior analyst in the Strategic Weapons
Evaluation Group (WSEG) in the Pentagon and a co-author of The
Pentagon Papers, provides an authoritative analysis of the
implications of nuclear war that remain insurmountable today. Indeed, such
research has been kept largely secret, with the intention “not to alarm
the public” about what was being cooked up.
“From MAD to Madness
could not be more timely reading. In it, a former senior Pentagon analyst from
the last Cold War comes back from the past to warn us of the disaster we are
courting in the new Cold War. We should heed his warning.”
— Ron Paul, M.D.Former Member of Congress (R-TX)
Publisher’s SYNOPSIS
This deathbed memoir by Dr. Paul H. Johnstone, former senior analyst in the
Strategic Weapons Evaluation Group (WSEG) in the Pentagon and a co-author of
The Pentagon Papers, provides an authoritative analysis of the implications of
nuclear war that remain insurmountable today. Indeed, such research has been
kept largely secret, with the intention “not to alarm the public” about what
was being cooked up.
This is the story of
how U.S. strategic planners in the 1950s and 1960s worked their way to the
conclusion that nuclear war was unthinkable. It drives home these key
understandings:
- That whichever way you look at it — and this
book shows the many ways analysts tried to skirt the problem — nuclear war
means mutual destruction
- That Pentagon planners could accept the
possibility of totally destroying another nation, while taking massive
destructive losses ourselves, and still conclude that “we would prevail”.
- That the supposedly “scientific answers”
provided to a wide range of unanswerable questions are of highly dubious
standing.
- That official spheres neglect anything near a
comparable effort to understand the “enemy” point of view, rather than to
annihilate him, or to use such understanding to make peace.
Dr. Johnstone’s
memoirs of twenty years in the Pentagon tell that story succinctly, coolly and
objectively. He largely lets the facts speak for themselves, while commenting
on the influence of the Cold War spirit of the times and its influence on
decision-makers.
Johnstone writes:
“Theorizing about nuclear war was a sort of virtuoso exercise in creating an
imaginary world wherein all statements must be consistent with each other, but
nothing need be consistent with reality because there was no reality to be
checked against.”
While remaining
highly secret – so much so that Dr. Johnstone himself was denied access to what
he had written – these studies had a major impact on official policy. They
contributed to a shift from the notion that the United States could inflict
“massive retaliation” on its Soviet enemy to recognition that a nuclear
exchange would bring about Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD).
The alarming truth
today is that these lessons seem to have been forgotten in Washington, just as
United States policy has become as hostile to Russia as it was toward the
Soviet Union during the Cold War. U.S. foreign policy is pursuing hostile
encirclement of two major nuclear powers, Russia and China. Without public
debate, apparently without much of any public interest, the United States is
preparing to allocate a trillion dollars over the next thirty years to
modernize its entire nuclear arsenal. It is as if all that was once understood
about the danger of nuclear war has been forgotten.
TAKE ACTION:
Your car is a prominent billboard. Put the sticker GOING BROKE PAYING FOR WAR on
your bumper. Or any antiwar sticker you
like.
#1. WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS (WWW)
December
23, 2020
2
new books on US wars: Vine and Sorensen
CHRISTIAN
SORENSEN. UNDERSTANDING THE WAR INDUSTRY. Clarity P, 2020.
Publisher’s description: The War Industry infests the American economy
like a cancer, sapping its strength and distorting its creativity while
devouring its treasure.
Stunning in the depth of its research, Understanding
the War Industry documents how the war industry commands the other two
sides of the military-industrial-congressional triangle. It lays bare the
multiple levers enabling the vast and proliferating war industry to wield undue
influence, exploiting financial and legal structures, while co-opting Congress,
academia and the media. Spiked with insights into how corporate boardrooms view
the troops, overseas bases, and warzones, it assiduously delineates how
corporations reap enormous profits by providing a myriad of goods and services
devoted to making war, which must be rationalized and used if the game is to
go on: advanced weaponry, drones and nukes; invasive information
technology; space-based weapons; and special operations—with contracts stuffed
with ongoing and proliferating developmental, tertiary and maintenance products
for all of it.
DAVID
VINE. The United States of War: A Global History of America's Endless
Conflicts, from Columbus to the Islamic State.
U of California P, 2020. Pages: 464.
Publisher’s description: The United
States has been fighting wars constantly since invading Afghanistan in 2001.
This nonstop warfare is far less exceptional than it might seem: the United
States has been at war or has invaded other countries almost every year since
independence. In The United States of War, David Vine traces
this pattern of bloody conflict from Columbus’s 1494 arrival in Guantanamo Bay
through the 250-year expansion of a global US empire. Drawing on historical and
firsthand anthropological research in fourteen countries and territories, The United States of War demonstrates
how US leaders across generations have locked the United States in a
self-perpetuating system of permanent war by constructing the world’s
largest-ever collection of foreign military bases—a global matrix that has
made offensive interventionist wars more likely. Beyond exposing the
profit-making desires, political interests, racism, and toxic masculinity
underlying the country’s relationship to war and empire, The United
States of War shows how the long history of U.S. military expansion
shapes our daily lives, from today’s multi-trillion–dollar wars to the
pervasiveness of violence and militarism in everyday U.S. life. The book
concludes by confronting the catastrophic toll of American wars—which have left
millions dead, wounded, and displaced—while offering proposals for how we can
end the fighting.
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