Not Without Incident: Questioning Big Brother's Platitudes

Keiran’s Take on the Week Ending July 9^th

This week I received the feedback on my thesis, a 19,500-word writing project that I wrote as the final step in completing my master’s in international relations, and the next step in pursuing my PhD. I have been busy going over this feedback and thinking about how I will develop my research and academic work in my blog and through publishing op-eds and articles in publications. For now, I will stick with publishing my take on the week as well as a longer post later in the week.

This week, there was much to write about, but two events stuck out to me, and they are both related to the military-industrial complex. Firstly, there is the issue of the US facing a debt crisis, with the solution, starting to cut the ballooning military budget, being off the table for the Washington establishment. Secondly, the Biden administration approved a new aid package for Ukraine, which includes cluster munitions. Not only has Biden bypassed US law in this decision, but he has committed to transferring weapons that have been ruled as illegal by over 100 countries.

Guns Before Butter

Presently, the US is facing a similar dilemma to the one LBJ faced in trying to implement the Great Society program. This dilemma was captured in a New York Times article published on July 5th headlined, “America is Living on Borrowed Money”.[i] One of the main points they make is that US borrowing has become unsustainable, and that to avoid a debt crisis, a compromise must be made by Republicans and Democrats, and Republicans need to accept taxes on the rich and Democrats will have to accept adjustments to Medicare and Social Security.

However, a compromise that is not discussed enough is the massive defense budget, which has drained the US treasury and puts money in the pockets of defense contractors, lobbyists, arms manufacturers, and high-level government officials, not in the pockets of American citizens. Evidently, the US establishment, which includes the New York Times, is primarily interested in empire, not the well being of its citizenry. As Jeffrey Sachs writes, “To surmount the debt crisis, America needs to stop feeding the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC), the most powerful lobby in Washington.”[ii] This feeding will be nigh impossible to cease, as so much of how Washington operates is totally reliant on endless wars and the presence of hundreds of military installations across the globe. Any political candidate who opposes US imperialism and seeks to cut military spending is roundly mocked and pushed to the fringes, like in the cases of Tulsi Gabbard and Ron Paul.

What this article published by The New York Times exposes is the corruption of the US establishment and their bipartisan commitment to ceaseless war and occupation.

William Jennings Bryan, who served as Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State before resigning in protest against Wilson’s decision to send a message implying that the US would declare war against Germany following the sinking of the Lusitania, was vehemently critical of Wilson’s choice to emphasize the production of weapons instead of food, and he argued that Wilson was putting “guns before butter”.

Later, during the LBJ presidency, a problem that LBJ ran into and a common criticism that he received in implementing his ‘Great Society’ program was that he would have to choose between guns and butter. LBJ’s war on poverty was hindered by his escalation of the war in Vietnam. Some of the US’s most heinous acts in Vietnam were committed under the LBJ administration, like the bombing campaign Operation Rolling Thunder, which lasted just over three years and caused immense destruction and casualties.

The promise of LBJ’s Great Society, articulated in a speech he delivered at the University of Michigan in 1967, were betrayed by his insistence that the US use any means necessary to resist the communist insurgency in Vietnam.[iii] Martin Luther King Jr. remarked in his “Beyond Vietnam” speech, delivered exactly a year before he was assassinated, that the Great Society program initially gave him hope, but that he “watched this program eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube.”[iv] King Jr. called for the Vietnam war to end, as it would be the only way that the Great Society could possibly be fulfilled. Then Senator Robert Kennedy made a similar point when he said that although aiding Southeast Asia was necessary, “we cannot build a Great Society there if we cannot build one in our own country.”[v]

The US currently faces a similar problem to an even greater degree, as the military adventurism in the Middle East of the Bush administration, which was then expanded under the Obama and Trump administrations, despite promises from both to end endless wars in their initial campaigns, has seen billions of dollars wasted, laundered through the coffers of arms manufacturers and the transnational security elite. Meanwhile, social programs, domestic infrastructure, and the livelihoods of American citizens, especially in the Rust Belt and the Appalachians, have been decaying.

As Tucker Carlson noted in his monologue on Trump’s indictment and the true purpose behind it, the American people, unlike elites in Washington, “have actually been to America.”, and like Chris Hedges illustrates in his book America: The Farewell Tour, he argues that with all of the money being spent by the US government, especially on its military, most of the country, in particular states already hollowed out by deindustrialization, are living in a nightmare of divestment and despair.[vi]

Such despair fuels political candidates like Trump. Until cuts to military spending and a curb on military adventurism, or what Alfred McCoy referred to as micro militarism, are enacted then there will be no funds for butter, only guns.

Fighting Dirty

Biden has approved sending cluster munitions to Ukraine, arguing that they are necessary for Ukraine to defend itself against Russia. This move was announced as part of yet another 800-million-dollar aid package to be sent to Ukraine. Cluster munitions are not only dangerous and faulty, but they have been deemed illegal via an international treaty, The Convention on Cluster Munitions introduced in 2008, signed by over 100 countries.[vii] The US, Ukraine, and Russia are not signatories. Thus, they are not bound by its ban on cluster munitions. However, US law prohibits the use or transfer of cluster munitions with a dud rate of more than 1%, and the cluster bombs to be sent to Ukraine will have, according to National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, a dud rate of no more than 2.5%.[viii] We are assured that this is nowhere near the dud rate of the cluster munitions that Russia deploys, which is closer to 30-40%. So not only is Biden flouting US law, but he is flouting international law.

Sullivan said in a press briefing on July 7^th, the day when the Pentagon announced Ukraine’s new aid package, that the cluster munitions would not be sued in “some foreign land.”, and he said that “This is their country they’re defending.  These are their citizens they’re protecting.  And they are motivated to use any weapons system they have in a way that minimizes risks to those citizens.”[ix] Apparently, to protect their citizens, they must deploy weapons that endanger them.

Consider the destruction and death tolls caused by cluster bombs in Laos, notable for being the most bombed country in the world. It is estimated that the US dropped 270 million cluster bombs on Laos during the Vietnam war.[x] Of these, around 30% did not immediately explode, and over the past five decades, about 20,000 people in Laos have been injured or killed by unexploded cluster munitions.[xi] Around 40% of these casualties are children.[xii] To this day the cleanup of cluster munitions in Laos continues, as well as in Vietnam and other countries in which the US has used cluster bombs.

The thought of deploying even more cluster munitions, when those that have already been used are yet to be cleaned up, is disturbing. Despite the dangers, the Biden administration is insistent that Ukraine needs cluster munitions. Volodymyr Zelensky is overjoyed at the aid package, saying that it was “A timely, broad and much-needed defense aid package from the United States.”[xiii] Yes, cluster munitions are much needed, if Zelensky’s goal is to turn his own country into little more than a field of unexploded bombs and rubble. He also said that “The expansion of Ukraine’s defense capabilities will provide new tools for the de-occupation of our land and bringing peace closer,”[xiv] By de-occupation, perhaps he means of everyone, not just Russians. What will bring peace closer is not more weapons, but diplomacy. Of all people, Trump captured this when his campaign issued a statement on the matter, partially in response to Mike Pence’s approval of Biden’s decision. Trump said that “Joe Biden should not be dragging us further toward World War III by sending cluster munitions to Ukraine — he should be trying to END the war and stop the horrific death and destruction being caused by an incompetent administration,”[xv] In this instance, Trump is absolutely right, however, it was the Trump administration who started sending arms packages to Ukraine, a move which the Obama administration never made, as Obama insisted that defending Ukraine was not in the interest of the US. Trump is right, though, that Biden should be trying to end the war, and it’s unclear how the use of cluster munitions will do this.

According to a report published by Human Rights Watch (HRW) in 2022, the Ukrainian military has used cluster munitions already, resulting in civilian casualties and damage to infrastructure.[xvi] As noted, a huge problem with cluster munitions is that hundreds of bomblets will inevitably sit unexploded for months, perhaps even decades, and in countries like Laos this remains a devastating issue. Canada, Spain, Britain, and various human rights groups have denounced Biden’s decision as well.[xvii] The countries just mentioned are all signatories to the Convention on Cluster Munitions. For all the inhumanity that Russia is engaging in, the US and the West have shown repeatedly that they are not above such inhumanity. What’s proven in Biden’s decision to send Ukraine cluster munitions, as well as Zelensky’s glee at receiving them, is that the West, like it’s adversaries, fights dirty.

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[i] Board, The Editorial. “Opinion | America Is Living on Borrowed Money.” The New York Times, July 5, 2023, sec. Opinion. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/05/opinion/debt-crisis.html#:~:text=It.

[ii] Sachs, Jeffrey. “Opinion | America’s Wars and the US Debt Crisis | Common Dreams.” http://www.commondreams.org, May 20, 2023. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/military-spending-debt-crisis.

[iii] Johnson, Lyndon B. “Remarks at the University of Michigan | the American Presidency Project.” http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu, May 22, 1964. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-the-university-michigan.

[iv] Luther King Jr., Martin. “American Rhetoric: Martin Luther King, Jr: A Time to Break Silence (Declaration against the Vietnam War).” Americanrhetoric.com, 2010. https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm.

[v] Kennedy, Robert. “Robert F. Kennedy Says the Vietnam War Cannot Be Won (1968).” alphahistory.com, 1968. https://alphahistory.com/vietnamwar/robert-f-kennedy-war-cannot-be-won-1968/.

[vi] Carlson, Tucker. “Https://Twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/Status/1668747661028081664.” Twitter, June 14, 2023. https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1668747661028081664.

[vii] Convention on Cluster Munitions. “The Convention on Cluster Munitions.” The Convention on Cluster Munitions, 2023. https://www.clusterconvention.org/.

[viii] House, The White. “Press Briefing by Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.” The White House, July 7, 2023. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2023/07/07/press-briefing-by-press-secretary-karine-jean-pierre-and-national-security-advisor-jake-sullivan-5/.

[ix] House, The White. “Press Briefing by Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.”

[x] The HALO Trust. “Laos.” The HALO Trust, 2023. https://www.halotrust.org/where-we-work/south-asia/laos/.

[xi] The HALO Trust. “Laos.”

[xii] The HALO Trust. “Laos.”

[xiii] Ukrinform. “‘Timely, Broad, Much-Needed’: Zelensky Thanks US for New Defense Aid Package.” http://www.ukrinform.net, July 7, 2023. https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3732993-timely-broad-muchneeded-zelensky-thanks-us-for-new-defense-aid-package.html.

[xiv] Ukrinform. “‘Timely, Broad, Much-Needed’: Zelensky Thanks US for New Defense Aid Package.”

[xv] Shabad, Rebecca. “Trump Denounces Biden’s Decision to Send Cluster Munitions to Ukraine.” NBC News, July 11, 2023. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-denounces-bidens-decision-send-ukraine-cluster-munitions-rcna93704.

[xvi] Human Rights Watch. “Ukraine: Civilian Deaths from Cluster Munitions.” Human Rights Watch, July 6, 2023. https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/07/06/ukraine-civilian-deaths-cluster-munitions.

[xvii] ABC News. “Canada, Spain among Countries Criticising US Supply of Cluster Bombs to Ukraine.” ABC News, July 9, 2023. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-09/ukraines-supply-of-cluster-bombs-from-us-cops-criticism-from-hu/102580548.

References

ABC News. “Canada, Spain among Countries Criticising US Supply of Cluster Bombs to Ukraine.” ABC News, July 9, 2023. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-09/ukraines-supply-of-cluster-bombs-from-us-cops-criticism-from-hu/102580548.

Board, The Editorial. “Opinion | America Is Living on Borrowed Money.” The New York Times, July 5, 2023, sec. Opinion. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/05/opinion/debt-crisis.html#:~:text=It.

Carlson, Tucker. “Https://Twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/Status/1668747661028081664.” Twitter, June 14, 2023. https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1668747661028081664.

Convention on Cluster Munitions. “The Convention on Cluster Munitions.” The Convention on Cluster Munitions, 2023. https://www.clusterconvention.org/.

House, The White. “Press Briefing by Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.” The White House, July 7, 2023. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2023/07/07/press-briefing-by-press-secretary-karine-jean-pierre-and-national-security-advisor-jake-sullivan-5/.

Human Rights Watch. “Ukraine: Civilian Deaths from Cluster Munitions.” Human Rights Watch, July 6, 2023. https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/07/06/ukraine-civilian-deaths-cluster-munitions.

Johnson, Lyndon B. “Remarks at the University of Michigan | the American Presidency Project.” http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu, May 22, 1964. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-the-university-michigan.

Kennedy, Robert. “Robert F. Kennedy Says the Vietnam War Cannot Be Won (1968).” alphahistory.com, 1968. https://alphahistory.com/vietnamwar/robert-f-kennedy-war-cannot-be-won-1968/.

Luther King Jr., Martin. “American Rhetoric: Martin Luther King, Jr: A Time to Break Silence (Declaration against the Vietnam War).” Americanrhetoric.com, 2010. https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm.

Sachs, Jeffrey. “Opinion | America’s Wars and the US Debt Crisis | Common Dreams.” http://www.commondreams.org, May 20, 2023. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/military-spending-debt-crisis.

Shabad, Rebecca. “Trump Denounces Biden’s Decision to Send Cluster Munitions to Ukraine.” NBC News, July 11, 2023. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-denounces-bidens-decision-send-ukraine-cluster-munitions-rcna93704.

The HALO Trust. “Laos.” The HALO Trust, 2023. https://www.halotrust.org/where-we-work/south-asia/laos/.

Ukrinform. “‘Timely, Broad, Much-Needed’: Zelensky Thanks US for New Defense Aid Package.” http://www.ukrinform.net, July 7, 2023. https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3732993-timely-broad-muchneeded-zelensky-thanks-us-for-new-defense-aid-package.html.