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]
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END OMNI WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #149, OCTOBER
25, 2023 |
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