Events continue to unfold at a quickening pace. Facing an alarming escalation in tensions around the world, we asked Finian Cunningham for his current thoughts.

Finian Cunningham has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organizations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. Second-time recipient of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromising Integrity in Journalism (December 2020). His prolific output of excellent political analysis and commentary can be accessed at Strategic Culture Foundation, Sputnik News, and RT.

We focus on the realities of the international power struggle unfolding in real time, specifically addressing the role of the U.S. in the tensions and its capacity to reduce them. We are looking for paradigm-shift ideas for improving the prospects for peace. His responses below of are exactly as he provided.

Here is what Finian had to say.

John Rachel: We hear a lot of terms and acronyms bandied about. ‘Deep State’ … ‘MIC’ … ‘FIRE sector’ … ‘ruling elite’ … ‘oligarchy’ … ‘neocons’.  Who actually defines and sets America’s geopolitical priorities and determines our foreign policy? Not “officially”.  Not constitutionally. But de facto.

Finian Cunningham:  All of the above terms can be used interchangeably to convey different facets of the power structure in the United States, and other nations. The ruling class comprises primarily corporate and financial interests of Wall Street and the military-industrial complex as well as combines of accumulated wealth. This nexus of power is nothing mysterious. It is the apex of the political and economic power of a social minority – the 1% is another term – that is the norm for capitalist society, as is explained in conventional class analysis. Writers like Michael Parenti and the late William Blum, among others, have described it well. The term “deep state” is a useful one because it conveys the continuity of power and powerful interests that remain entrenched regardless of which political party or personage is in the presidential or congressional office.

The politicians do the bidding of the ruling class to serve their economic and political interests. This condition of permanent entrenched power accounts for why policies change little from one administration to another, whether Democrat or Republican. That’s why foreign policies change little, if at all. The unspoken foreign policy of the US is to serve the imperialist interests of its ruling class (Wall Street banks, commodity multinationals, overseas investors) and to maximize militarism for the financial benefit of the big and ancillary corporations that comprise the military-industrial complex.

For example, if we look back over the last decade from the Obama administration, through Trump to the present Biden one, there is fundamentally no difference in foreign policy. Even though we went from Democrat to Republican back to Democrat and despite differences in presidential personalities. Obama launched the “Pivot to Asia” with its keynote policy of antagonizing China. Obama also unleashed the policy of confrontation with Russia. Of course, Obama didn’t originate these policies. The antagonism towards perceived geopolitical rivals goes back decades to the Cold War. But certainly under Obama, there seemed to have been a step-change in pursuing more conflict with China and Russia.

From Obama through Trump to Biden, the foreign policy of aggression has not only continued but has also been intensified. This is an illustration of the “deep state” at work. The objective of the ruling class’s interests is to confront China and Russia in order to project US imperial power or hegemonic ambitions of global dominance for the capitalist advantages of its de facto governing corporate structure. The political party labels are irrelevant. The ship of state is charted for a collision course with perceived global rivals. Those rivals are, of course, portrayed as “enemies” and “threats”. That narrative or propaganda is required to “justify” (legitimize) the policy of antagonism and militarism, which is essentially a criminal warmongering policy.

This, in my view, explains why the United States aided and abetted by subordinate “allies” are drumming up war with China over Taiwan and with Russia over Ukraine. The collision course is set by the ruling class in accordance with their interests, not by the majority of American citizens. This speaks of the fundamentally undemocratic nature of the US and its allies. More accurately, the US and its Western vassal states are acting like fascist powers because the policies are fixed by corporate power and reinforced with immense militarism. There is no democratic accounting for the war fixation. Citizens are held hostage by the warmongering deep state.

JR: We’ve had decades of international tensions. Recent developments have seen a sharp escalation in the potential for a major war. The U.S. apparently cannot be at peace. “Threats” against the homeland are allegedly increasing in number and severity. The trajectory of our relations with the rest of the world appears to be more confrontations, more enemies, more crises, and more wars.

Is the world really that full of aggressors, bad actors, ruthless opponents? Or is there something in our own policies and attitudes toward other countries which put us at odds with them, thus making war inevitable and peace impossible?

FC: The United States in its capitalist formation as described above needs conflict and ultimately war like a drug addict needs a narcotic fix. The US cannot function without militarism because of the nature of its corporate capitalist economy and in particular the dominance of the military-industrial complex. The US economy is a hyper-militarized one befitting a fascist state. In order to justify this totally abnormal and undemocratic functioning, which is also criminal by the way, then there is the imperative need for a propaganda cover of legitimizing narrative about “enemies and threats”. This illusory narrative is dutifully sustained by the corporate-controlled media which reinforces, and never questions, nostrums about “foreign enemies” and “foreign threats”.

China, for example, is continually portrayed as a national security threat, an expansionist power and a threat to Taiwan in particular. The US claims to “defend” Taiwan from a Chinese threat. Under international law and US own domestic law, China has sovereignty over Taiwan in what is known as the One China Policy. Since Obama, through Trump and Biden, the US has increased sales of strategic weapons to Taiwan. This so-called US policy of “strategic ambiguity” is really more accurately called the “strategic destabilization” of China with the aim to antagonize Beijing. Beijing has repeatedly said it aspires to peaceful reunification with the island of Taiwan, but Washington relentlessly militarizes the situation by massively arming Taiwan, inciting separatist politics and inciting Beijing to react with military measures, which arguably are a legitimate response to defend its sovereignty. Can you imagine if the shoe was on the other foot?

This week, the United States’s government-funded organization the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is organizing a “world democracy summit” in Taiwan (October 25-27). (See this article.)

The summit called for a challenge to “authoritarian regimes”. In other words, a CIA front organization (NED) is fomenting sedition and secession on Chinese sovereign territory. And yet in the US media, this week all we heard about were unsubstantiated warnings that Chinese President Xi Jinping is going to take China in a more aggressive direction over the next five years of his third term in office.

Meanwhile the Chinese foreign ministry this week urged the United States to stop demonizing China as a global threat and for Washington to work together in a mutual partnership for world development and peace. So it is clear who the aggressor is here.

In relation to Russia, in the months before the war in Ukraine blew up in February this year, Moscow had set out a detailed proposal for a comprehensive security treaty in Europe. The proposed treaty called on the US-led NATO military bloc to stop expanding eastwards towards Russia’s borders, as it has done relentlessly since the supposed end of the Cold War in 1991 following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Moscow’s security treaty proposals were simply trashed by the United States. No negotiations were conceivable for Washington. It insisted on NATO expansion and the “right” to continue arming a radical anti-Russian regime in Ukraine which Washington has bankrolled with weapons and military trainers since the CIA-backed coup in Kiev in 2014. That US deep state policy of antagonism, militarism, and aggression (regardless of who is in the White House) has led to the current war in Ukraine with Russia which the US and its NATO allies are doing everything to escalate, even if it runs the risk of a nuclear cataclysm.

As with Taiwan and China, the United States is on a fixed course of confrontation with Russia using Ukraine as the conduit. It is blatantly obvious who the aggressor is. And it should be blatantly obvious that the motive for this aggression is the paramount need to keep the US capitalist economy and its fascist power structure functioning through hyper-militarism.

JR:  Our leaders relentlessly talk about our “national interests” and our “national security”, warning that both are under constant assault. Yet, we spend more than the next nine countries combined on our military. Why does such colossal spending never seem to be enough?

FC: Because American capitalism is a war-driven economy. The military-industrial complex is so embedded and prevalent that US capitalism would not function without conflict, tensions, and ultimately war. No other nation comes close to the warmongering record of the United States. Five years after World War II, it was bombing millions of Korean civilians to death. William Blum puts the number of wars and conflicts the US has engaged in since World War II at dozens and scores. What for? To “defend democracy and law and order?” How ridiculous and obscene! The entire power structure of the US would collapse without war – or its latent version of tensions and conflict with “foreign enemies”. That power structure equates to deadly serious vested interests. It’s what President Eisenhower warned about in 1961 and two years later his successor John F Kennedy was assassinated because he threatened the militaristic power structure from growing peace talks with the Soviet Union. JFK’s assassination – a president’s head blown off in broad daylight during a motorcade watched by millions of citizens – is perhaps the single most horrific example of the fascist deep state made manifest, which is the brutal, sickening reality beneath the patina of “American democracy”.

JR: It’s evident that you, and the many individuals who follow you and support your work, believe that America’s direction in both the diplomatic sphere and in the current conflict zones represents exercise of government power gone awry. Can you paint for us in broad strokes the specific changes in our national priorities and policies you view as necessary for the U.S. to peacefully coexist with other nations, at the same time keeping us safe from malicious attacks on our security and rightful place in the world community?

FC: The United States needs to be democratized. Its power structure and economy need to be demilitarized and made to work for the benefit of the majority of citizens. In short, I believe a socialist society is the best solution. But the fight for genuine democracy and peace comes with a hard struggle because of the vested interests of the status quo. However, with the evident collapse of US capitalist society (and other Western states), the task is being made more necessary and in some ways easier because it is becoming starkly evident that the existing system is bankrupt, corrupt, criminal, and unsustainable for the majority of working people – who really do want peaceful societies and peaceful international coexistence.

I believe that peaceful international relations with China, Russia and the United States and other nations are very possible. The primary threat to our human existence comes from the United States under its prevailing system. If that system can be transformed into a peaceful, democratic, socialist economy by a mass movement of Americans then the world will be likewise transformed. The key is the demilitarization of the US requiring a social change that goes way beyond its present oligarchic capitalist system. That is the biggest historic challenge the whole world wants to see being achieved. It won’t happen unless American citizens get organized politically. If they don’t, then a world war is in danger of happening. If a war happens, and the planet survives it, then the best we can hope for is the defeat of the US deep state and an opening for democratic transformation by the American citizens. The peaceful option is, of course, desired but the US oligarchy is making violence almost inevitable.

The general public, especially when it’s aware of the self-sabotaging results of our current foreign policies and military posturing, clearly wants less war and militarism, preferring more peaceful alternatives on the world stage and greater concentration on solving the problems at home. As peace activists, we are thus more in line with the majority of citizens on issues of war and peace, than those currently in power.

JR: What happens if we determine that those shaping current U.S. policy don’t care what the citizenry thinks, are simply not listening to us? What if we conclude that our Congress, for example, is completely deaf to the voice of the people? What do we do? What are our options then? What are the next concrete steps for political activists working toward a peaceful future?

FC: What about if Americans in greater numbers boycotted elections with the explicit reason being that they don’t recognize the process? I mean total boycott. And for the citizens to be organized and conscious about what their objectives are: they will only engage with politics, voting, and form-filling, when a party is on the ballot sheets that genuinely represents their class needs as workers and aspirations for peaceful foreign relations. Maybe Americans should go on strike and bring the system to a crash. And the same goes for Europeans, by the way.

*****

John Rachel:  We are grateful to Finian Cunningham for sharing his valuable and thought-provoking views. The interview was arranged by John Rachel, Director of the Peace Dividend Project. The Peace Dividend strategy is not a meme or a bumper sticker. It is an end-to-end methodology for challenging the political establishment and removing from power those compromised individuals who work against the interests of the great majority of U.S. citizens. The only hope for our hyper-militarized nation is each and every one of us having a decisive voice in determining the future we want for ourselves and our children. 

This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

Events continue to unfold at a quickening pace. Facing an alarming escalation in tensions around the world, we asked Cynthia McKinney for her current thoughts.

Cynthia McKinney is an American politician and assistant professor at North South University, Bangladesh. As a member of the Democratic Party, she served six terms in the United States House of Representatives, as the first African American woman ever elected to represent Georgia. She was also the first Member of Congress to demand an investigation of the events of 9/11 and the first to file articles of impeachment against George W. Bush. She voted against every war-funding bill put before her. In 2008, Cynthia McKinney won the Green Party nomination and ran for U.S. President.

We focus on the realities of the international power struggle unfolding in real time, specifically addressing the role of the U.S. in the tensions and its capacity to reduce them. We are looking for paradigm-shift ideas for improving the prospects for peace. Her responses below are exactly as she provided.

Here is what Cynthia had to say.

John Rachel: We hear a lot of terms and acronyms bandied about. ‘Deep State’ … ‘MIC’ … ‘FIRE sector’ … ‘ruling elite’ … ‘oligarchy’ … ‘neocons’. Who actually defines and sets America’s geopolitical priorities and determines our foreign policy? Not “officially”.  Not constitutionally. But de facto.

Cynthia McKinney:  As you have probably noticed, the signature of my e-mails has a quote from a U.K. television series:  “You get to the top and you realize it’s only the middle.” Tom Dawkins, UK Prime Minister in the 2012 TV series, Secret State.  I watched every minute of this TV series and when this was uttered by the actor portraying the U.K. Prime Minister, I knew this was what I would call “faction.”  Because that is exactly the way I felt upon realizing that Members of Congress don’t call the shots; they are mere actors [with a whole lot of squandered power that could be used to actually HELP people—including their constituents and those harmed by U.S. foreign and military policies] who trick their constituents.

They are also cowards, because they could say no to these people, but they don’t dare.  They are also narcissists because they think they’re smarter than their constituents and in many cases, also the donors, too.  I saw some of them playing games with the so-called report cards from lobbyists, scoring 50% on them all and then collecting money from both sides on every issue!!  Some committees are known as “money committees” and those are highly sought after—not for their jurisdiction, but for their rewards in campaign contributions!

Thus, from the very beginning, the purpose and process of U.S. policy-making has been corrupted.  I had one famous Congresswoman tell me, “Cynthia, you just have to accept that when the [Democratic Party] Leadership tell us to do something, we’re going to do it!”  So, these narcissists who trade your hopes and dreams for favors from the rich and powerful accustomed to getting their way all the time, aren’t even leaders, either!  They’re followers at best, cowards.  Because, in the end, they don’t want to end up like me—out of the position that allows them adoration from the public and favored by the rich and powerful.

If that means “shaving around the edges” of your morals, values, and principles, so be it.  The primordial objective, once you’re there, is to stay there until you die.  Your life becomes one long LSD trip.  [Mind you, I’ve never been on an LSD trip, but I understand that people find it enjoyable, exceptionally revealing, and way more interesting than the, by-comparison, mundane world.]  I had people calling me, visiting me, offering me fame and longevity in Congress.  All I had to do was become “theirs.”  One rabbi told me that he would “broker” me to the Jewish community if I were to agree to “come under my stable.”

By now, everyone who knows me knows about the oath to Israel that I was basically forced to sign—I refused.  The others who manage to stay in U.S. elected offices have signed a loyalty oath in one form or another to a foreign country.  I don’t know of anything more heinous—other than that those who demand fealty to another country operate in our country with impunity.  They have been caught by FBI translators trading U.S. national security secrets to other countries with impunity.  Instead, the FBI translator who heard these conversations was, herself, punished and silenced!  Not the traitors!

One clear reading of the COINTELPRO papers and the Frank Church Committee Reports makes it clear that evil [I know of no other way to describe them] people are giving the orders and another set of evil operatives who wield official power are implementing those orders.  The political institutions of the U.S. are spent.  They and the people who occupy them need to be razed and we should start all over again—with only the Bill of Rights as our guide.  I am not afraid to envision another political system for the U.S.  I think global kakistocracy and psychopathocracy are the clear results of indirect democracy—what a Republic is.  And if a Republic is INdirect democracy, I believe it’s time for us to try DIRECT democracy.

JR:  We’ve had decades of international tensions. Recent developments have seen a sharp escalation in the potential for a major war. The U.S. apparently cannot be at peace. “Threats” against the homeland are allegedly increasing in number and severity. The trajectory of our relations with the rest of the world appears to be more confrontations, more enemies, more crises, more wars.

Is the world really that full of aggressors, bad actors, ruthless opponents? Or is there something in our own policies and attitudes toward other countries which put us at odds with them, thus making war inevitable and peace impossible?

CM: Correction. We’ve had decades of Western aggression against the non-Western world.  Parts of Europe are also decidedly NOT Western.  Therefore, to include all of Europe in the sins and transgressions and aggressions of “The West” is incorrect.  We are seeing that idea now being concretized in international relations.

In fact, I traveled to Russia a few years ago at the invitation to some of the young people there.  I met with a wide swath of the Moscow organized and politically active youth and I had only one question for them as they had many for me.  My one question was, “How do you view yourself; are you Western European or are you Russian?”  Understanding the centuries-old desire of Russian leaders to emulate the Paris or Vienna of their day, I wanted to understand the identity of the young adults I was meeting.  To a person, they told me that they are Russians; they have no desire to be like The West.  This represents a paradigm shift from historic Russia.

Because of the political system currently favored by the global “Deep State,” the people really are not the ones who are controlling policy outcomes.  We the People of the U.S. are allowing the bad guys to rule with impunity.  We the People of the U.S. need regime change in the image of the Bill of Rights; Putin’s most recent speech tagged Anglo-Saxons.  Yes, Anglo Saxons have, indeed, committed their fair share of atrocities on the planet and the people of this world.

However, a small but well-connected cabal of Zionists is responsible for orchestrating and organizing and justifying the world’s wars since September 11, 2001.  I’ve started a list of perpetrators.  It’s larger than one would imagine.  Because those who say “Yes” outnumber those who stand up to them and say, “No.”  The impunity of these bad actors needs to be ended.

The next phase of our activities should involve building the alternative societies that we envision; correcting all of the lies that have been told to us, like, for example, the 100% anthropogenic explanation for “global warming” climate change.  But, that is not enough.  We must also deny official state power to those who now wield it.  Full stop.  Period.  Everyone there now needs to go and the institutions need to be razed to make way for a new form of governance.

That cannot happen with those committed to the corrupted institutions of today, nor can it happen as long as those who have no other vision for governance are able to wield state power over us.  A group recently came out with a “revolutionary” recommendation to eliminate single-member districts for Congress.  It turns out that their idea really wasn’t so revolutionary after all because I introduced the Voters’ Choice Act almost 30 years ago that contained that same provision!

JR: We’ve had decades of international tensions. Recent developments have seen a sharp escalation in the potential for a major war. The U.S. apparently cannot be at peace. “Threats” against the homeland are allegedly increasing in number and severity. The trajectory of our relations with the rest of the world appears to be more confrontations, more enemies, more crises, more wars.

CM:  The money is being stolen and even enough is never enough when free money is being helicoptered to one privileged group—and stolen from the unlucky other ones.  What’s amazing is that the unlucky other ones demurely allow this to happen almost without even a shrug of their shoulders.

JR:  It’s evident that you, and the many individuals who follow you and support your work, believe that America’s direction in both the diplomatic sphere and in the current conflict zones represents exercise of government power gone awry. Can you paint for us in broad strokes the specific changes in our national priorities and policies you view as necessary for the U.S. to peacefully coexist with other nations, at the same time keeping us safe from malicious attacks on our security and rightful place in the world community?

CM:  Putin spoke of the Anglo Saxons. That’s poignant and purposeful.  There are people who realize that the U.S. has veered off track.  But, they think they can “take our country back” without forming a coalition with other newer and older “Americans.”  As long as the rallies of today’s “patriots” look like Ku Klux Klan meetings, these rally-ers will lose.  Maybe the idea of forming a coalition that is truly inclusive with people from different races and differing religions, and even with no religion—is the central Anglo-Saxon problem.  For, people who share skin colors don’t necessarily share visions, objectives, purposes.  But, these rallies give the impression that they do.

The U.S. is in this predicament precisely because the Anglo-Saxons in charge at one time found false friendship with people of the same skin color, but whose values and vision were frighteningly different; yet, at the same time, these same Anglo-Saxons in charge of the U.S. state viewed the Black and Brown people in their midst as alien and foreign and undesirable.  After speaking at one of the earlier “unacceptable,” “take our country back” peace rallies, I chanced upon a reporter who was covering the anti-Iraq War rally.  I asked him how did you “lose” your country without a shot being fired?  His response was honest and revealing:  “They [meaning their enemy] were White like us.”

JR: The general public, especially when it’s aware of the self-sabotaging results of our current foreign policies and military posturing, clearly wants less war and militarism, preferring more peaceful alternatives on the world stage and greater concentration on solving the problems at home. As peace activists, we are thus more in line with the majority of citizens on issues of war and peace, than those currently in power.

What happens if we determine that those shaping current U.S. policy don’t care what the citizenry thinks, are simply not listening to us? What if we conclude that our Congress, for example, is completely deaf to the voice of the people? What do we do? What are our options then? What are the next concrete steps for political activists working toward a peaceful future?

CM: We invite Louis Farrakhan to have another Million Man March in Washington, D.C. And then, we invite the public to occupy the White House, Capitol, Supreme Court, and Federal Buildings.  Because, when Farrakhan came to Washington, there was a voluntary evacuation of Washington, D.C. like nothing I’ve ever seen before.  Then, we occupy and we don’t leave.

*****

Author’s Note:

We are grateful to Cynthia McKinney for sharing her valuable and thought-provoking views. The interview was arranged by John Rachel, Director of the Peace Dividend Project. The Peace Dividend strategy is not a meme or a bumper sticker. It is an end-to-end methodology for challenging the political establishment and removing from power those compromised individuals who work against the interests of the great majority of U.S. citizens. The only hope for our hyper-militarized nation is each and every one of us having a decisive voice in determining the future we want for ourselves and our children. 

This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

Events continue to unfold at a quickening pace. Facing an alarming escalation in tensions around the world, we asked Norman Solomon for his most current thoughts. We focus on the realities of the international power struggle unfolding in real time, specifically addressing the role of the U.S. in the tensions and its capacity to reduce them.

Norman Solomon is an American journalist, media critic, activist, and former U.S. congressional candidate. He is a long time associate of the media watch group Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting. In 1997 he founded the Institute for Public Accuracy which works to provide alternative sources for journalists, and serves as its executive director.  Solomon is co-founder and national director of RootsAction. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2016 and 2020 Democratic National Conventions, and is the author of a dozen books, including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death (2006) and Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America’s Warfare State (2007).

We are looking for paradigm-shift ideas for improving the prospects for peace. His responses below are exactly as he provided.

Here is what Norman had to say.

John Rachel: We hear a lot of terms and acronyms bandied about. ‘Deep State’ … ‘MIC’ … ‘FIRE sector’ … ‘ruling elite’ … ‘oligarchy’ … ‘neocons’. Who actually defines and sets America’s geopolitical priorities and determines our foreign policy? Not “officially”.  Not constitutionally. But de facto.

Norman Solomon: Setting the boundaries of dominant discourse — with reiteration and omission — is crucial to guiding and determining U.S. foreign policy as well as discouraging the spread of dissent. The very notion that U.S. military spending is “defense” spending gets any discussion off to a badly distorted start. I wouldn’t be against spending that is truly for defense, but right now only a small proportion of the Pentagon budget deserves to be in that category. The U.S. maintains about 750 military bases overseas and is currently engaged in military operations in 80 countries. As I put it in a recent article for Truthout, “Leaders of the U.S. government never tire of reasserting their commitment to human rights and democracy. At the same time, they insist that an inexhaustible supply of adversaries is bent on harming the United States, which must not run away from forceful engagement with the world. But the actual U.S. agenda is to run the world.” It’s an agenda propelled and implemented largely by corporate power, with tremendous profits being made — mostly by huge corporations; military contracting is a sacred cash cow for the oligarchy. The warfare state is a corporate state.

JR: We’ve had decades of international tensions. Recent developments have seen a sharp escalation in the potential for a major war. The U.S. apparently cannot be at peace. “Threats” against the homeland are allegedly increasing in number and severity. The trajectory of our relations with the rest of the world appears to be more confrontations, more enemies, more crises, more wars.

Is the world really that full of aggressors, bad actors, ruthless opponents? Or is there something in our own policies and attitudes toward other countries which put us at odds with them, thus making war inevitable and peace impossible?

NS: It’s been said that the United States is in search of enemies, and certainly there’s an unending supply — especially when trying to run the world as much as you can. Of course, the world is filled with many people and forces eager to concentrate undue power and oligarchic wealth in the hands of a few, and the United States is hardly responsible for that reality. That said, the U.S. government is the leading international lawbreaker and killer in this century — it’s really not a debatable fact, it’s a matter of looking at the numbers of deaths from the U.S. wars on Afghanistan and Iraq alone. “Do as we say, not as we do” has never been a very convincing message. What the world needs is a single standard of human rights and international law. Hypocrisy in Washington does not justify Russia’s murderous war on Ukraine, or vice versa.

JR: Our leaders relentlessly talk about our “national interests” and our “national security”, warning that both are under constant assault. Yet, we spend more than the next nine countries combined on our military. Why does such colossal spending never seem to be enough?

NS: Well, like capitalism itself, militarism is insatiable. The results of the drive for profits, however momentarily satisfying they might be, are never enough. It’s a kind of pathological gluttony. The greed for personal wealth and power is intertwined with similar institutional greed; when does a corporation say that the profits are too high or there’s no need to try to increase them in the future? Never. Meanwhile, people all over the world on a massive scale are suffering and dying from preventable diseases, lack of healthcare, malnutrition or outright starvation, and an environmental crisis including a climate emergency that keeps getting worse.

JR: It’s evident that you, and the many individuals who follow you and support your work, believe that America’s direction in both the diplomatic sphere and in the current conflict zones represents exercise of government power gone awry. Can you paint for us in broad strokes the specific changes in our national priorities and policies you view as necessary for the U.S. to peacefully coexist with other nations, at the same time keeping us safe from malicious attacks on our security and rightful place in the world community?

NS: Collective security among nations is the only hope for international peace and stability in the best sense of the word. The economic, environmental and health crises afflicting humanity right now truly know no borders. The U.S. government should practice what it preaches and stop asserting with action the prerogative to keep crossing borders and killing people. While vastly boosting expenditures to meet human needs with a wide array of social programs, the United States could cut its military budget in half right away and be not only just as secure but also more so. A good example is the U.S. ICBM force of 400 nuclear missiles in underground silos, on hair-trigger alert all the time. As Daniel Ellsberg explained this year, “No other strategic weapons besides ground-based ICBMs challenge a national leader to decide, absurdly within minutes, whether ‘to use them or lose them.’ They should not exist…. No other specific, concrete American action would go so far immediately to reduce the real risk of a false alarm in a crisis causing the near-extinction of humanity.”

JR: The general public, especially when it’s aware of the self-sabotaging results of our current foreign policies and military posturing, clearly wants less war and militarism, preferring more peaceful alternatives on the world stage and greater concentration on solving the problems at home. As peace activists, we are thus more in line with the majority of citizens on issues of war and peace, than those currently in power.

What happens if we determine that those shaping current U.S. policy don’t care what the citizenry thinks, are simply not listening to us? What if we conclude that our Congress, for example, is completely deaf to the voice of the people? What do we do? What are our options then? As a thought leader and advocate of comprehensive reform, what do you propose?

NS: Well, any thoughts that I or anyone else has, no matter how worthwhile, will be of limited value without the kind of grassroots organizing that can create meaningful change. Democracy has always been a combination of mirage and reality even in the best of times in the United States. Virtually every change for the better that we can be proud of in U.S. history came from the bottom up, not from the top down, of the existing power structures. The fight for democracy is never-ending. Joe Hill said, “Don’t mourn, organize!” There’s no better advice available in a few words. (I’m very glad to be working with colleagues at RootsAction, which now has 1.2 million online supporters, and I invite all readers to sign up for action alerts at RootsAction.org.) Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of the imperative need for militant nonviolent action. Progressive social movements that organize effectively with such an approach have enormous potential to help create a truly better world.

This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

Events continue to unfold at a quickening pace. Facing an alarming escalation in tensions around the world, we asked Colonel Larry Wilkerson for his current thoughts.

Colonel Wilkerson is a renowned defense analyst and a Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Government & Public policy at the College of William and Mary. He is a retired United States Army colonel and was the former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

We focus on the realities of the international power struggle unfolding in real time, specifically addressing the role of the U.S. in the tensions and its capacity to reduce them. We are looking for paradigm-shift ideas for improving the prospects for peace. His responses below of are exactly as he provided.

Here is what Colonel Wilkerson had to say.

John Rachel: We hear a lot of terms and acronyms bandied about. ‘Deep State’ … ‘MIC’ … ‘FIRE sector’ … ‘ruling elite’ … ‘oligarchy’ … ‘neocons’.  Who actually defines and sets America’s geopolitical priorities and determines our foreign policy? Not “officially”.  Not constitutionally. But de facto.

Lawrence Wilkerson:  So far as scholarship can ascertain, “The Deep State” as a phrase and in a modern sense was first formally used by Michael Lofgren, a longtime member of the U.S. Congressional staff with the Republican Party.  Mike became one of the severest critics of his own political party after retirement in 2011 and his book, The Deep State, followed.  However, Mike published an article in September, 2011, entitled “Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult”, that presaged the book.  Lest one think he had praise for the Democratic Party, here is one scathing comment he had for both parties: they are, he wrote, “rotten captives to corporate loot.”

Mr. Lofgren’s article was well-read across America.  He wrote about “a web of entrenched interests in the US Government and beyond (most notably Wall Street and Silicon Valley, which controls every click and swipe) that dictate America’s defense decisions, trade policies and priorities with little regard for the actual interests or desires of the American people.”  He labeled the Republican Party “a cult”, and from the results of the recent elections in the U.S., it is easy to ascertain that there are possibly seventy million-plus Americans in that cult.  The present situation is a shocking revelation and a powerful testimony to the half-century or longer of a deteriorating U.S. education system, a mainstream media totally captured by the monied interests of the Deep State as Mike describes it, and a “Fourth Great Awakening”, or some 95-100 million Evangelicals in America, a great many of whom — but not all — could accurately be called “American Taliban”.   I’ve called them “Christian Nationalists” and there are among them people like Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert who would have Christianity declared America’s national religion, in complete defiance of the Constitution — a constitution she declares ought to be changed.

Since Mr. Lofgren’s coinage of the term “deep state” many have used it, often describing their particular interpretation of the term as well as their disdain for that specific part or parts of America that they feel contribute most to our inability to win wars or even govern ourselves; thus, using the term to represent many different but usually pernicious influences on Washington’s decision-making.

But Mr. Lofgren’s deep state is precisely what he said it is: “a web of entrenched interests in the US Government and beyond”.  In that light, Mr. Lofgren’s old home and frequent target of his criticism, the U.S. Congress, has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of these interests; the US Supreme Court likewise; and the presidency a toss-up on any given decision but most often going with particular deep state influences as they increase or assist its maintenance of political power and patronage.  Of course, also as Mr. Lofgren claims, the bulk of the American people are not present in this combination, nor are their interests.  And this abysmal development just might explain, as much as the cultish aspect of the Republican Party, why some of those seventy millions voted for a megalomaniacal, lying, incredibly fake — even treasonous — Donald Trump in November 2020.

This is the pervasive, powerful, utterly undemocratic power that runs our country.

JR: We’ve had decades of international tensions. Recent developments have seen a sharp escalation in the potential for a major war. The U.S. apparently cannot be at peace. “Threats” against the homeland are allegedly increasing in number and severity. The trajectory of our relations with the rest of the world appears to be more confrontations, more enemies, more crises, more wars.

Is the world really that full of aggressors, bad actors, ruthless opponents? Or is there something in our own policies and attitudes toward other countries which put us at odds with them, thus making war inevitable and peace impossible?

LW: Empires, for that is what America is, at the height of their powers can never be at peace.  With more than 750 military installations all over the globe — the rest of the world has fewer than 75 — there is no rest for America.  Every state or non-state actor with capacity — like al-Qa’ida — is seen as a potential threat.  Whether administering interminable sanctions on a sizeable part of the world, or using military power outright, these are the tools of statecraft for an imperial power in decline.  Moreover and dramatically, America has made war, the threat of war, and intimidation, whether economic and financial or bombs, bullets and bayonets, magnificently profitable for the “security industry”, from private military contractors to behemoths of industry such as the Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Boeing corporations.  When war is so profitable, it is a certainty there will be more of it.  The Ukraine conflict is a glaring and present example.   So long as these conditions persist, war is inevitable.

JR:  Our leaders relentlessly talk about our “national interests” and our “national security”, warning that both are under constant assault. Yet, we spend more than the next nine countries combined on our military. Why does such colossal spending never seem to be enough?

LW:  Yes, and see my and Major General Dennis Laich’s article in “The Hill”, here.

As you can ascertain from the article, the All-Volunteer Force, the current US military instrument, is collapsing in on itself.  One cannot expect money alone — the US Navy is now offering the equivalent of more than $100 thousand to key personnel to come back or to stay in its ranks — to sustain indefinitely a military that increasingly cannot find sufficient recruits to remain viable as a security instrument, let alone be the main arm of an imperial power’s policy.  Today, overall national security spending — intelligence, veterans affairs, nuclear weapons, and State Department’s 150 account — tops $1.3 trillion annually.  This is an unsustainable expenditure and is another dramatic indication of imperial decline.  But such spending, for reasons outlined previously and more, is impossible to stop or to even curb.  Recently, with regard to security spending on Ukraine, an analysis demonstrated a 450,000 percent return-on-investment for the six largest defense contractors.  In short, they donated approximately $10.2 million to the half-dozen top legislators in Congress with regard to defense budgets.  In return, because of US outlays for Ukraine and NATO, the defense contractors reaped almost half a trillion dollars in arms and munitions sales.  This is why the spending can never be enough.

JR:  It’s evident that you, and the many individuals who follow you and support your work, believe that America’s direction in both the diplomatic sphere and in the current conflict zones represents exercise of government power gone awry. Can you paint for us in broad strokes the specific changes in our national priorities and policies you view as necessary for the U.S. to peacefully coexist with other nations, at the same time keeping us safe from malicious attacks on our security and rightful place in the world community?

LW: I believe I can, but that by no means indicates my counsel will ever be followed. With regard to diplomacy, we first must learn how to do it again; since around 1980, we have forgotten how.  Brute force has been substituted — with the sole and dramatic exception of the Obama Administration’s success in orchestrating, along with the P5+1, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear agreement with Iran.   That was an example of what I call “exquisite diplomacy” by which is meant diplomacy that results in a win-win outcome, where both parties give a little, both parties build trust by that surrender, and the end result is a positive one for both.  Sadly, the minions of empire find that result very difficult to stomach and so work hard to destroy it, which is precisely what President Trump and the Republican Party did as soon as Trump had the opportunity.

Today, what I assert is necessary is cooperation, collaboration, and comity — achieved largely through diplomacy.  Why?  Because the world confronts two inescapable and existential crises, each of which no single nation — not even an empire — can manage alone.   I refer to the new crisis of nuclear weapons and the now fifty-years-old crisis of a dramatically changing climate. Nations working together — particularly the peer and near-peer powers such as America, China, Russia, India, and the European Union — must perforce lead this collaboration.   If not, we will all suffer the fate of the dinosaurs — extinction.

We must forge new nuclear weapons arms control to replace all the treaties we have abandoned.   And every nuclear weapons state — all nine of them, including Israel and North Korea — must be included.  That will require prolonged, exquisite diplomacy and especially on the part of the U.S., EU, China and Russia. Otherwise, we are once again two minutes from midnight.  In fact, today’s situation just might be worse than that moment in October 1962 when Soviet missiles in Cuba gave the world a nuclear jolt.

The climate crisis, now roaring down the tracks at all of us like an out of control freight train — see the Technical Section of the 28 February report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for stark proof — is going to eliminate humans from the planet.  We must act, and wisely and smartly. Only a consortium of nation-states — and eventually all — can accomplish what is needed.  This is the profound reason we must turn from war and cooperate and collaborate and in a spirit of comity.  The heads of the IPCC delegations from Ukraine and Russia spoke to this purpose right after the 24 February Russian invasion of Ukraine.  Basically, they both declared the Russian invasion moronic in the face of the monumental challenge their report described, like being preoccupied with grains of sand on the beach when a tsunami is about to wash over you and everything in sight.

JR: The general public, especially when it’s aware of the self-sabotaging results of our current foreign policies and military posturing, clearly wants less war and militarism, preferring more peaceful alternatives on the world stage and greater concentration on solving the problems at home. As peace activists, we are thus more in line with the majority of citizens on issues of war and peace, than those currently in power.

What happens if we determine that those shaping current U.S. policy don’t care what the citizenry thinks, are simply not listening to us? What if we conclude that our Congress, for example, is completely deaf to the voice of the people? What do we do? What are our options then? What are the next concrete steps for political activists working toward a peaceful future?

LW: In many important ways, this is the question of the moment for our declining empire, or more to the real point, for our almost extinct democratic federal republic.  The domestic issue of gun control demonstrates how desperate the situation is: consistent and sizeable majorities of Americans — often as high as 90 percent — want some sort of gun control to assist in ameliorating the barrage of shootings occurring in the country almost weekly.  Yet our Congress blithely ignores this public interest — and the recent legislation is a farce in that regard, as continued shootings, in schools and elsewhere, will no doubt sadly corroborate. Likewise, is the extraordinary maldistribution of wealth in the nation, worse, for instance, than in 1929.   Congress ignores it, as if the labyrinthine and fully corrupt tax code for which they are responsible has nothing to do with it.  Likewise, is our crumbling national infrastructure which threatens to derail our economy, and all Congress can do is issue band-aids from time to time.  What’s the answer?

There probably is not a single answer, but many complex and difficult-to-implement ones.  But bordering on a single answer is this: do not vote for public office for any member of the Republican Party, period.  Hold your nose and vote Democratic or Independent — the latter if candidates are available.   Then, if that individual does not do the job, throw him or her out next time around — until our legislators get the message.   Our Founders considered the legislative branch the closest thing to the people.  Not the courts and not the presidency; the Congress.  We need desperately to teach our own legislators that lesson and then demand that they listen and perform accordingly — not as lackeys of the national security state or the NRA, or of Israel, or of the banks, but as representatives of We The People.

*****

John Rachel: We are grateful to Col. Wilkerson for sharing his valuable and thought-provoking views. The interview was arranged by John Rachel, Director of the Peace Dividend Project. The Peace Dividend strategy is not a meme or a bumper sticker. It is an end-to-end methodology for challenging the political establishment and removing from power those compromised individuals who work against the interests of the great majority of U.S. citizens. The only hope for our hyper-militarized nation is each and every one of us having a decisive voice in determining the future we want for ourselves and our children. 

This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

Events are unfolding at a quickening pace. Facing an alarming escalation in tensions around the world, we are looking to our most respected and renowned thought leaders for an honest assessment of both U.S. foreign and military policy to offer their most current thoughts and insights. We know they have some ideas for improving the prospects for peace.

Scott Ritter served as a former U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence officer (1984-1991), in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General  Norman Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and as a UN weapons inspector in Iraq (1991-1998). He is author of SCORPION KING: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump, “Iraq Confidential” (Nation Books, 2005), and “Target Iran” (Nation Books, 2006). His responses below are exactly as he provided.

The questions here are not philosophical or abstract. They focus on the realities of the international power struggle unfolding in real time. They directly address the role of the U.S. in the escalating tensions and its capacity to reduce them. We also probe the role of everyday citizens in affecting the relationship the U.S. now has and will have with the rest of the world community.

Here is what Scott Ritter had to say.

John Rachel:  The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has recently put the hands of the Doomsday Clock to 100 seconds before midnight. Midnight means all out war, probably nuclear holocaust. This is the closest it has every been. Do you agree with this dire assessment?

Scott Ritter:  No. There have been occasions in the past where the confluence of geopolitical posturing and military hubris combined to make the conditions favourable for nuclear conflict greater than those that exist today. We have reduced the amount of forward-deployed nuclear weapons and have altered our military doctrine so that the use of nuclear weapons is not assumed, but rather seen as a separate, deliberate action above and beyond the military mission at hand. This does not mean that the threat of a nuclear conflict isn’t real, or that the world should not be concerned. The point here is that it doesn’t matter where you set the Doomsday Clock; if the decision is made to use nuclear weapons, it means we are at zero, and we failed. So long as nations possess nuclear weapons and have corresponding nuclear postures that postulate scenarios for which the use of nuclear weapons are considered a viable outcome, we will always be one second away from global annihilation. The Doomsday Clock should be set at one second until all nuclear weapons are eliminated—that’s the true state of play. Anything else is simply an exercise in self-deception.

JR:  The U.S. always portrays itself as the greatest force on the planet for peace, justice, human rights, racial equality, etc. Polls tell us that most other nations actually regard the U.S. as the greatest threat to stability. What in your view is the truth here?

SR:  Peace, justice, human rights, racial equality, etc….these are very subjective topics which mean different things to different people at different times. The human condition is not conducive to any utopian notion of universality. There will always be competition between groups of people, whether organized as states, coalitions, alliances, etc. There was a time when the confluence of global conditions positioned the US as the foremost power in defence of nations sharing similar value sets. But we should not pretend that the US is a nation which embraces the very notions is proclaims to defend. No nation lives up to the promise of its own propaganda—none. The nations that oppose the United States are not paragons of virtue themselves. Many of them are actively engaged in a competition for resources and access with the US which colours their outlook. The truth is humanity has not learned how to peacefully coexist with itself. The US has done much to help nations survive and prosper, but only if those nations are useful in the pursuit of American goals and objectives. We don’t support those who are aligned against us…we are not a benevolent nation. No nation is.

JR:  Here’s a chicken-or-egg question: The U.S. accuses both Russia and China of rapidly expanding their military capabilities, claiming its own posturing and increase in weaponry is a response to its hostile adversaries, Russia and China. Both Russia and China claim they are merely responding to intimidation and military threats posed by the U.S. What’s your view? Do Russia and China have imperial ambitions or are they just trying to defend themselves against what they see as an increasingly aggressive U.S. military?

SR:  Where do you start the clock when answering this question? The US, Russia, and China have always been involved in a version of the “great game” that incorporates military power as a means of gaining and maintaining control over objectives deemed to be in the national interest. Picking an arbitrary point in time as your starting point and drawing conclusions based upon the resultant fact set ignores the fact that at one point or another in the past two centuries, Russia, China, and the US (along with France, Germany, the UK, Italy, Japan, and others) have all sought to use military power as a means of gaining a geopolitical advantage over others. Greed loves a vacuum, and humans are perpetually greedy; that’s one way of saying if you don’t maintain sufficient force to defend yourself, someone will take advantage of that. The US didn’t invent wars of aggression.

JR:  The U.S. always denies that it has imperial ambitions. Most unbiased experts say that by any objective standards, the U.S. is an empire — indeed the most powerful, sprawling empire in history. Does the U.S. have to be an empire to be successful in the world and effectively protect and serve its citizenry?

SR:  All one has to do is look at the disparity between the rate of consumption of the American people and what we produce. The reality is that we are dependent upon resources that come from other nations to maintain the lifestyle we enjoy. Empires operate the same way. We are an empire.

JR: The highest ranking commanders of the U.S. military recently sounded the alarm. They have concluded that the U.S. — widely regarded as the most formidable military power in history — can’t defeat either Russia or China in a war. These military commanders are saying we need to dramatically increase our military capabilities. What do you make of this claim and the resulting demand for more DOD spending?

SR:  Russia has built a military that can defeat the US and NATO in a stand-up conventional fight, and yet Russia spends a fraction of whet the US does on defence. The problem with the US defence system isn’t how much we spend (which is too much, by the way) but what we spend it on, and how we spend it. We have a bloated defence acquisition system geared more toward generating profits for the military defence industry than producing capable defence products. The F-35 fighter stands out as a case in point, but it is not unique. If I were Congress, I’d find a way to streamline acquisition at the same time as revising doctrine so that the US could field a lethal military force at half the cost. But then again, Congress is married to the defence industry, which underwrites their political campaigns. Military commanders always want more without ever admitting they could make do with far less.

JR:  In 2009, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton announced a reset with Russia, heralding greater cooperation and understanding. By 2014, Obama had made a sharp reversal. A sweeping regime of sanctions has since been imposed on Russia to cripple its economy. Hillary Clinton and the Democrats now relentlessly demonize Russia and Putin, blaming them for every imaginable ill. Both in the media and from official pronouncements by government officials, Russia has become the favorite whipping boy for both the U.S. and its “special friend”, Great Britain.  Why?  What happened?

SR:  We had a moment in history, between 1988 and 1991, where we could have worked with Mikhail Gorbachev to make his vision of perestroika succeed. Instead, we allowed him to fail, without any real plan on how we would live with what emerged from the ruins of the Soviet Union. Save for a short period of time during the Second World War where we needed the Soviet Union to defeat Germany and Japan, we have been in a continual state of political conflict with the Soviet Union. Even after the Soviet Union collapsed, we viewed the Russian Federation more as a defeated enemy that we needed to keep down, than a friend in need of a helping hand up. Yeltsin’s Russia was useful to the US and NATO only to the extent that we could exploit it economically while controlling its domestic politics in a manner that kept Russia in a perpetual state of weakness. The Obama “reset” was simply a ploy to remove Vladimir Putin, who rejected the vision of Russia projected by the west, and replace him with Dmitri Medvedev, whom Obama believed could be remade in the figure of Yeltsin. The fact that Putin believes in a strong Russia has upset the plans of the US, NATO, and Europe for post-Cold War hegemony, predicated as they were on a weak, compliant Russian state.

JR:  The number of spy missions, nuclear-armed bomber flights, and war games near Russia’s borders have vastly increased over the past year. Same with China. Is all of this just business-as-usual geopolitical posturing? Or does it represent a dangerous escalation and a new ominous direction in U.S. strategic positioning? What is the justification for what Russia and China see as provocations and aggressiveness, if not actual preparation for a war?

SR:  To be honest, the level of intelligence collection today pales in comparison to what we were doing during the Cold War. It’s all a matter of perspective. We are engaged in a global geopolitical competition with both Russia and China that has a military component attached to it. The intelligence collection and military posturing is simply a ramification of this reality. I think the Russians and Chinese are mature enough in their own assessments to distinguish between simple intelligence collection and posturing, and actual preparations for war.

JR:  Between the FONOPS in the South China Sea and the recently expressed enthusiasm for Taiwan’s independence, the risk of military conflict with China keeps increasing. Where is this headed? If People’s Republic of China decides to use military force for full reunification of Taiwan, do you see the U.S. going to war in an attempt to prevent it?

SR:   You can’t have two competing major powers operating in the same space without conflict. The US will either have to retreat from the South China Sea, and stop supporting Taiwan, or there will be a military conflict. I don’t see the US retreating, so the question is what level of conflict will ensue. The US lacks the capacity for meaningful military engagement in either front. China will probably seek some form of low-level conflict that can be contained as a way of compelling a US retreat. But unless the US changes course, there will be a war.

JR:  The U.S. against the clear objections of the government in Syria is occupying valuable land, stealing the country’s oil, and preventing access to the most agriculturally productive region, effectively starving the population. The world sees this for what it is, a cruel game sacrificing innocent people for some perceived geopolitical advantage. Is this the kind of reputation the U.S. wants? Or does it simply no longer care what the rest of the world community thinks?

SR:  The US doesn’t care, and frankly speaking neither does the rest of the world. Arab life has become virtually worthless in terms of generating sympathy when it is lost. The world has come to accept the cheapness of an Arab life. That the US is involved in policies that harm Arabs simply does not shock the global conscious the way it should, if for no other reason than the Arabs themselves behave as if Arab life holds no value. How else to you explain the sectarian violence, the Saudi assault on Yemen, etc.?

JR: In a democracy, at least in theory citizens have a say in all matters of public policy. Yet, in the end none of the recent military campaigns and undeclared wars seem to achieve much popular favor or support. What is and what should be the role of everyday citizens in determining the foreign policy and military priorities of the country? Or are such matters better left to the “experts”?

SR:  We should stop pretending that the US is a functioning democracy; Citizens United proves we are not—when the courts grant citizenship powers to corporations, money and greed become the nation’s lifeblood, not the will of the people. The American people have allowed themselves to be dumbed down to the point that their opinions are easily manipulated by corporate-owned and controlled mainstream media. The inability to function as a viable component of government has resulted in the “people” fracturing into competing ideological and socio-economic fiefdoms. American democracy is little more than feudalistic plutocracy. It’s an unsustainable model doomed to collapse in on itself.

JR:  Related to that, the citizenry and most of Congress are kept in the dark with respect to special missions, proxy funding, CIA operations, and swaths of unknown unknowns constituting psyops, cyber ops, and regime change ops, all done in our name as U.S. citizens. The funds to support this sprawling “dark world” of sabotage and terror being inflicted on the rest of the planet, is also a secret.  Now there’s pervasive spying on U.S. citizens right here at home.  What place does any of this have in “the land of the free”? Does this mean government of the people, by the people, for the people is just a sham?

SR:  While there is a role for secret operations in the conduct of legitimate defence-related activities, every effort should be made to minimize that which is defined as secret, and to ensure that anything deemed secret is eventually revealed so that the American people can be fully informed as to what is being done in their name. Secrecy is the death of democracy. That we live in a police/military state where everything is classified is proof positive of the decline of the United State as a functioning democracy. America cannot cure itself until it reveals all of its secrets to its citizens; otherwise, we are only pretending to live in a democracy. Democracy thrives in sunlight, not shadows.

JR:  Recently we’ve seen some token but precedent-setting direct payments to citizens in the form of Covid relief. There is also the ongoing discussion about reparations to descendants of slaves. If it could be unequivocally established that the government has abused DOD funding, misused and squandered vast sums of money to promote unjustified wars, purchase unneeded equipment, unnecessarily expand U.S. military presence across the globe, and regularly lied to the American public to manufacture consent for these misadventures and fraudulent activities, practical and political considerations aside, do you see any constitutional or other legal barriers to the public identifying, expecting, or even demanding proper compensation? A cash refund or citizen reparations for massive, authenticated abuse of power?

SR:  The House of Representatives controls the purse—it alone can make determinations regarding the allocation of financial resources. The American people have the ability to elect new Congressional representatives every two years. The answer to all of our problems could be solved by electing the right people to represent us. And yet…look at Congress today. It is fundamentally broken, divided along ideological lines, and in the pockets of corporate sponsors and special interests. The answer is no—beyond some token Covid-like bribes, the American people will never see compensation for the mismanagement of their taxpayer dollars so long as they have a Congress configured as it currently is.

*****

John Rachel:  We are grateful to Scott Ritter for his thought-provoking views. The interview was arranged by John Rachel, Director of the Peace Dividend Project. This effort embraces a powerful, unprecedented, end-to-end strategy for challenging the tyranny of neocon warmongers in Washington DC, ending the endless wars, and reversing the self-destructive foreign policy and military paradigm which now poisons U.S. relations with the rest of the world. Scott Ritter has also agreed to be interviewed for the full-length Peace Dividend documentary film, a devastating indictment of the corruption and fraud built into our excessive military budgets and imperial overreach. This movie will inform, unite and empower everyday citizens to have a voice in determining the future they want for themselves and their children.

This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

Events are unfolding at a quickening pace. Facing an alarming escalation in tensions around the world, we are looking to our most respected and renowned thought leaders for an honest assessment of both U.S. foreign and military policy to offer their most current thoughts and insights. We know they have some ideas for improving the prospects for peace.

Cynthia McKinney is an American politician and assistant professor at North South University, Bangladesh. As a member of the Democratic Party, she served six terms in the United States House of Representatives, as the first African American woman ever elected to represent Georgia. She was also the first Member of Congress to demand an investigation of the events of 9/11 and the first to file articles of impeachment against George W. Bush. She voted against every war-funding bill put before her. In 2008, Cynthia McKinney won the Green Party nomination and ran for U.S. President. Her responses below are exactly as she provided.

The questions here are not philosophical or abstract. They focus on the realities of the international power struggle unfolding in real time. They directly address the role of the U.S. in the escalating tensions and its capacity to reduce them. We also probe the role of everyday citizens in affecting the relationship the U.S. now has and will have with the rest of the world community.

Here is what Cynthia McKinney had to say.

John Rachel:  The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has recently put the hands of the Doomsday Clock to 100 seconds before midnight. Midnight means all out war, probably nuclear holocaust. This is the closest it has ever been. Do you agree with this dire assessment?

Cynthia McKinney:  While I don’t always agree with the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, I have to acknowledge that for many people on the planet, it is already Doomsday; the U.S. is bombing or sanctioning dozens of countries around the world. U.S. bombs and U.S. sanctions have real consequences.  As usual, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has a very Eurocentric view of Doomsday: Iraq was pummeled with depleted uranium munitions.  On a trip to that country three years ago, every member of my delegation arrived home sick after having been in Iraq just over one week.  Depleted uranium used there has resulted in incalculable premature deaths, cancers, deformed babies, and untold general illnesses.  Depleted uranium has been used in Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, as well as in Iraq.  I introduced legislation to prohibit the use of these munitions and was visited by the Pentagon; my Congressional office was event infiltrated by a young, hip-looking intern who was later found rifling through my office files and fired on the spot.  I did not, however, hear a peep from Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

JR:  The U.S. always portrays itself as the greatest force on the planet for peace, justice, human rights, racial equality, etc. Polls tell us that most other nations actually regard the U.S. as the greatest threat to stability. What in your view is the truth here?

CM:  The so-called Spanish Flu actually originated on a military base in Kansas; so, too, the situation with SARS-CoV-2, the so-called China virus, whose bioweapon spike protein originated in the U.S., created with U.S. tax dollars. No one who has lived inside the U.S. would ever seriously declare the U.S. “as the greatest force on the planet for peace, justice, human rights, racial equality, etc.”  Instead, those who know the U.S., know that the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. still ring true today:  that the U.S. is the greatest purveyor of violence on the planet.  Only Israel and apartheid South Africa could rival the U.S. in modern times.  U.S. allies, the colonizing countries, are also responsible for unspeakable horrors in pre-modern times.  Now, certain elements of the U.S. Deep State have declared war against the people of Russia, China, and the bloodstreams of the current global population.  After all, it was the Project for a New American Century that wrote in Rebuilding America’s Defenses on page 60 the following:  “[A]dvanced forms of biological warfare that can ‘target’ specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.”  Every one of the signatories to this document put him- or herself  in a position to make this statement become official U.S. policy.  Hence, official circumvention of the moratorium on gain-of-function research in order to create the bioweapon spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 and the mRNA concoctions that are being portrayed as “vaccines.”  In fact, the Spanish Flu became a global phenomenon helped along by a mass inoculation project of the Rockefeller Foundation.  Parallels to today are staggering.

JR:  Here’s a chicken-or-egg question: The U.S. accuses both Russia and China of rapidly expanding their military capabilities, claiming its own posturing and increase in weaponry is a response to its hostile adversaries, Russia and China. Both Russia and China claim they are merely responding to intimidation and military threats posed by the U.S. What’s your view? Do Russia and China have imperial ambitions or are they just trying to defend themselves against what they see as an increasingly aggressive U.S. military?

CM:  Interesting. I have visited Malaysia many times; it has a vibrant population of people from India and China.  Yet, I was in the audience when Tun Dr. Mahathir stated that Malaysians had less to fear from the Chinese than they did from the British.  In fact, the U.S. and their cousin English colonizers are responsible for the trafficking of individual Indians and Chinese all over the world.  Add to that, the annihilations by French conquerors and Spanish Conquistadores—and you’re talking about the murders and subjugation of untold millions of individuals.  The U.S. allies were not the victims of the colonial atrocities of Spain, Britain, France, Belgium, Holland. U.S. allies are the perpetrators of incalculable physical and psychological pain in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.  Interestingly, the friends to the colonized peoples were the Soviet Union and Mao’s China, which was divided as a result of U.S. hegemony over Taiwan and Britain’s sovereignty over Hong Kong.  Neither Russia nor China, at their worst, can count the globally pervasive international crimes against humanity that are owned by the so-called West.  Even worse, the U.S. has turned those reprehensible international behaviors onto the people of the U.S.  Even going so far as testing potential bioweapons on the U.S. domestic population.

JR:  The U.S. always denies that it has imperial ambitions. Most unbiased experts say that by any objective standards, the U.S. is an empire — indeed the most powerful, sprawling empire in history. Does the U.S. have to be an empire to be successful in the world and effectively protect and serve its citizenry?

CM:  Well, it depends on how one defines success and what it means to effectively protect and serve U.S. citizens. Clearly, the U.S. empire is successful for some people and it protects and serves some people.  I have learned to always believe the opposite of U.S. government proclamations.  In the words of a former U.S. President, “Trust, But Verify.”

JR:  The highest ranking commanders of the U.S. military recently sounded the alarm. They have concluded that the U.S. — widely regarded as the most formidable military power in history — can’t defeat either Russia or China in a war. These military commanders are saying we need to dramatically increase our military capabilities. What do you make of this claim and the resulting demand for more DOD spending?

CM:  The “Missile Gap” propaganda won’t work a second time, although it’s probably true this time around! And, more than likely, it would be Russia AND China against the U.S. because U.S. policy has driven the two countries into a “Strategic Partnership.”  The Pentagon shouldn’t receive another penny until they pass an independent forensic audit with prosecutions for fraud.  Military contractors should be treated worse than the insatiable welfare queens that they are.  If the military cannot fight either Russia or China, let alone the two of them together, it is the fault of the military and the Members of Congress who have allowed the complete mismanagement and neglect of true U.S. national security.  Members of Congress and the Executive have misdirected true U.S. national security for generations and gotten away with it.  The impunity must end.  And justice must be meted out to those guilty of the treachery.  Unless stern action is taken, and those who have been irresponsible with taxpayers’ dollars and U.S. national security are confronted publicly with their actions, the only thing that will happen is that yet another generation of criminals will move into positions of public trust.

JR:  In 2009, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton announced a reset with Russia, heralding greater cooperation and understanding. By 2014, Obama had made a sharp reversal. A sweeping regime of sanctions has since been imposed on Russia to cripple its economy. Hillary Clinton and the Democrats now relentlessly demonize Russia and Putin, blaming them for every imaginable ill. Both in the media and from official pronouncements by government officials, Russia has become the favorite whipping boy for both the U.S. and its “special friend”, Great Britain.  Why?  What happened?

CM:  I believe the people of the U.S. would choose peace and a multipolar international political structure rooted in truth, justice, and dignity if they were engaged as important partners in an information-laden, transparent national dialogue.

JR:  The number of spy missions, nuclear-armed bomber flights, and war games near Russia’s borders have vastly increased over the past year. Same with China. Is all of this just business-as-usual geopolitical posturing? Or does it represent a dangerous escalation and a new ominous direction in U.S. strategic positioning? What is the justification for what Russia and China see as provocations and aggressiveness, if not actual preparation for a war?

CM:  Yes; Yes; There is none.

JR:  Between the FONOPS in the South China Sea and the recently expressed enthusiasm for Taiwan’s independence, the risk of military conflict with China keeps increasing. Where is this headed? If People’s Republic of China decides to use military force for full reunification of Taiwan, do you see the U.S. going to war in an attempt to prevent it?

CM:  No.

JR:  The U.S., against the clear objections of the government in Syria, is occupying valuable land, stealing the country’s oil, and preventing access to the most agriculturally productive region, effectively starving the population. The world sees this for what it is, a cruel game sacrificing innocent people for some perceived geopolitical advantage. Is this the kind of reputation the U.S. wants? Or does it simply no longer care what the rest of the world community thinks?

CM:  In as much as the controllers of the U.S. Deep State are carrying out these actions, clearly, it means that they are shameless and don’t care what the world thinks of them. This is not new.  This is what the U.S. really is.  Too bad the people of the U.S. haven’t cared enough since the 1960s to stop it, and when they did care enough to resist these policies, the Deep State of the U.S. resorted to deception, neutralization, and murder of its own citizens as policy.  One thorough read of the COINTELPRO Papers and the Senator Frank Church Select Committee Reports discloses the extent to which the U.S. Deep State was willing to go to war against the peace-loving people of the U.S. in order to continue its rapacious plunder of the world outside of Europe.

JR:  In a democracy, at least in theory, citizens have a say in all matters of public policy. Yet, in the end none of the recent military campaigns and undeclared wars seem to achieve much popular favor or support. What is and what should be the role of everyday citizens in determining the foreign policy and military priorities of the country? Or are such matters better left to the “experts”?

CM:  All official papers should be declassified and the current state of media in the U.S. should be completely and totally revamped. The Big Six should be dismantled; the airwaves should be democratized; foundations and corporations should be forced out of the media business.  Big Tech should be dismantled and social media should become a free market of ideas, big conversations, and big decisions. Peer-to-peer technologies and decentralization should become the new organizing principles on a foundation of freedom and responsibility.  Direct Democracy should be the decision-making process for most issues of high state importance with adequate debate on the topics under consideration so that informed votes are cast.

JR:  Related to that, the citizenry and most of Congress are kept in the dark with respect to special missions, proxy funding, CIA operations, and swaths of unknown unknowns constituting psyops, cyber ops, and regime change ops, all done in our name as U.S. citizens. The funds to support this sprawling “dark world” of sabotage and terror being inflicted on the rest of the planet, is also a secret.  Now there’s pervasive spying on U.S. citizens right here at home.  What place does any of this have in “the land of the free”? Does this mean government of the people, by the people, for the people is just a sham?

CM:  None; Yes.

JR:  Recently we’ve seen some token but precedent-setting direct payments to citizens in the form of Covid relief. There is also the ongoing discussion about reparations to descendants of slaves. If it could be unequivocally established that the government has abused DOD funding, misused and squandered vast sums of money to promote unjustified wars, purchase unneeded equipment, unnecessarily expand U.S. military presence across the globe, and regularly lied to the American public to manufacture consent for these misadventures and fraudulent activities, practical and political considerations aside, do you see any constitutional or other legal barriers to the public identifying, expecting, or even demanding proper compensation? A cash refund or citizen reparations for massive, authenticated abuse of power?

CM:  A novel idea; I like it. I also like the idea of seizing the ill-gotten gains of billionaires and redistributing that wealth to U.S. citizens or residents in need.  A rebate to taxpayers for the years of abuse suffered by them at the hands of a compromised and complicit Congress is certainly in order.  Only a sick society would put a banker between a student and her professor and an insurance bureaucrat between a doctor and his patient.  The United States has reached the outer limits of Constitutionalism and is now on the verge of becoming a completely unrecognizable polity.  We the People must stop this slide to tyranny now, or forever be trapped inside its matrix.

*****

John Rachel:  We are grateful to Cynthia McKinney for her thought-provoking views. The interview was arranged by John Rachel, Director of the Peace Dividend Project. This effort embraces a powerful, unprecedented, end-to-end strategy for challenging the tyranny of neocon warmongers in Washington DC, ending the endless wars, and reversing the self-destructive foreign policy and military paradigm which now poisons U.S. relations with the rest of the world. We hope to further interview Cynthia for the full-length Peace Dividend documentary film, a devastating indictment of the corruption and fraud built into our excessive military budgets and imperial overreach. This movie will inform, unite and empower everyday citizens to have a voice in determining the future they want for themselves and their children.

This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

Events are unfolding at a quickening pace. Facing an alarming escalation in tensions around the world, we are looking to our most respected and renowned thought leaders for an honest assessment of both U.S. foreign and military policy to offer their most current thoughts and insights. We know they have some ideas for improving the prospects for peace.

Finian Cunningham has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. Second-time recipient of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromising Integrity in Journalism (December 2020). His prolific output of excellent political analysis and commentary can be accessed at Strategic Culture Foundation, Sputnik News, and
RT. His responses below are exactly as he provided.

The questions here are not philosophical or abstract. They focus on the realities of the international power struggle unfolding in real time. They directly address the role of the U.S. in the escalating tensions and its capacity to reduce them. We also probe the role of everyday citizens in affecting the relationship the U.S. now has and will have with the rest of the world community.

Here is what Finian Cunningham had to say.

John Rachel:  The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has recently put the hands of the Doomsday Clock to 100 seconds before midnight. Midnight means all out war, probably nuclear holocaust. This is the closest it has ever been. Do you agree with this dire assessment?

Finian Cunningham:  Yes, I am not sure about the precise position of the clock hands, but definitely I think it is appropriate that there is such grave concern about the danger of a war breaking out between the United States and either Russia or China or both. In numerous official policy papers and statements by successive administrations, Washington has provocatively designated both Russia and China as “national security threats”. The basis for such a bellicose designation is flimsy and often unsubstantiated. That means the United States is gratuitously inflaming tensions with two nuclear powers. Note how this aggressive stance by the US is a continuation of Cold War hostility even though the Cold War was supposed to have ended 30 years ago.

Both Russia and China have repeatedly urged Washington to desist from holding a Cold War mentality, but Washington is incorrigible. It craves Cold War hostility and demarcation of the world into “allies and enemies” because such polarization of international relations is fundamental to how US global power operates. It needs conflict, tensions, even though that risks ultimately war, in order to satisfy its war-driven capitalist economy. Now look at the practical relations: the US is stoking tensions with China over Taiwan and with Russia over Ukraine. The common denominator is US aggravation in the vital national security areas of China and Russia. Russia and China are not patrolling near US territory. The US is arming to the teeth Taiwan separatists even though Washington claims disingenuously to maintain a One China Policy. The US is arming to the teeth a reactionary, Russophobic regime in Ukraine. One miscalculation, one provocation too far could ignite a war. The risk of war is very real and high. And that is a damning shame on US foreign policy and the nature of its hegemonic power ambitions.  The self-declared US hegemon is pushing the world towards the abyss of war, no-one else is.

JR:  The U.S. always portrays itself as the greatest force on the planet for peace, justice, human rights, racial equality, etc. Polls tell us that most other nations actually regard the U.S. as the greatest threat to stability. What in your view is the truth here?

FC:  There’s no doubt, contrary to the vainglorious image-projection, that the US is a lawless rogue state that wages wars whenever and where-ever it deems necessary for pursuit of its imperialist capitalist interests. No other nation since World War II comes near to the warmongering record of the United States. Not even close. How many nations have been violated? How many millions of lives have been destroyed by the US presumption to launch wars or “interventions”, as it euphemistically calls them, often under utterly mendacious pretexts of “fighting terrorism” or “protecting human rights”? If a person finds this a strange point of view, then perhaps they should question the information they have been consuming. Really, it is absurd for the US to designate Russia, China or any other nation a threat to international security when we objectively consider its own heinous history of criminal destruction.

JR:  Here’s a chicken-or-egg question: The U.S. accuses both Russia and China of rapidly expanding their military capabilities, claiming its own posturing and increase in weaponry is a response to its hostile adversaries, Russia and China. Both Russia and China claim they are merely responding to intimidation and military threats posed by the U.S.  What’s your view? Do Russia and China have imperial ambitions or are they just trying to defend themselves against what they see as an increasingly aggressive U.S. military?

FC:  The United States is the party that has unilaterally abandoned arms control treaties with Russia. The ABM in 2003, the INF treaty in 2019 and the Open Skies Treaty in 2020. Abandoning these treaties has undermined the architecture for nuclear arms controls and is inducing a new arms race. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that the scrapping of the ABM by the GW Bush administration was the factor in why his nation was compelled to develop hypersonic missiles which, the Russians have calculated, would restore strategic balance. As far as China is concerned, it has a nuclear arsenal that is about 5 percent of the United States’ stockpile of warheads. Russia and China’s security doctrines are based on defensive reasoning. Not so that of the United States. Its military power is projected in terms of fighting perceived or designated enemies, “protecting allies” and all sorts of other fantasies.

The US – the only nation to have used atomic weapons in war and against a civilian population – is an aggressor power owing to its imperial motives. Therefore, it is understandable, and indeed necessary, for other targeted nations to always ensure that the US never contemplates a preemptive strike. Russia and China have a no-first strike policy. They have declared this. The US does not. It retains the right to use nuclear weapons preemptively. It is quite clear the egg in this situation is US militarism. The onus is therefore on the US to lead the way to global disarmament by scaling back its nuclear arsenal and giving pledges to other nations seeking peace. Designating others gratuitously as enemies is inciting or trying to incite arms races and tensions. Because, as noted above, US corporate capitalism and its military-industrial complex are totally dependent on a world of insecurity and hostility. Even to the point of risking all-out war. The US as currently ruled is like an addicted junkie. It needs a fix of war periodically.

JR:  The U.S. always denies that it has imperial ambitions. Most unbiased experts say that by any objective standards, the U.S. is an empire — indeed the most powerful, sprawling empire in history.  Does the U.S. have to be an empire to be successful in the world and effectively protect and serve its citizenry?

FC:  The United States has approximately 800 military bases around the world in over 100 countries. It spends about $750 billion per year on the military which dwarfs Biden’s impending infrastructure bill. The US has destroyed nations across Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa – and that’s only in the past two decades, never mind seven decades since World War II. The US has sabotaged elections in dozens of countries, overthrown elected governments, fomented dirty civil wars and carried out assassinations of political enemies. Is that all for promoting peace, democracy and “rules-based global order? Or for imperial interests and objectives. The answer is obvious.

JR:  The highest ranking commanders of the U.S. military recently sounded the alarm. They have concluded that the U.S. — widely regarded as the most formidable military power in history — can’t defeat either Russia or China in a war. These military commanders are saying we need to dramatically increase our military capabilities. What do you make of this claim and the resulting demand for more DOD spending?

FC:  It is the usual alarmist, scaremongering to fuel the military-industrial complex. The weapons corporations are among the biggest lobbyists in Congress. Politicians are bought by their largesse and vote accordingly. Military pundits depend on the largesse too. This is a racket going back to Marine General Smedley Butler in the early 1900s, and again with the alleged “missile gap” that the Soviet Union was supposed to have in the 1950s and 60s which turned out to be a heap of lies. But it served the purpose of pumping public money into US militarism instead of serving real human, democratic needs. No wonder the United States is falling apart from social decay, poverty and crumbling infrastructure when so much money – trillions and trillions of dollars – have been wasted decade after decade on propping up a useless, destabilizing and dangerous war economy that is the main factor for why the Doomsday Clock is approaching midnight.

JR:  In 2009, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton announced a reset with Russia, heralding greater cooperation and understanding.  By 2014, Obama had made a sharp reversal. A sweeping regime of sanctions has since been imposed on Russia to cripple its economy. Hillary Clinton and the Democrats now relentlessly demonize Russia and Putin, blaming them for every imaginable ill. Both in the media and from official pronouncements by government officials, Russia has become the favorite whipping boy for both the U.S. and its “special friend”, Great Britain.  Why?  What happened?

FC:  The United States, for imperative reasons stated above stemming from its capitalist-imperialist system, continually and relentlessly needs conflict and war. If it wasn’t Russia or China, US rulers would have to invent some other bogeyman nation. Specifically, regarding Russia’s Putin, the US and its lackeys like Britain have found him particularly objectionable because he is not a Yes Man. Same for China’s President Xi Jinping. They have both a strong and principled position of defending their national interests and are not willing to comply with Washington’s dictate. That makes them intolerable in Washington’s view. Hence the relentless propaganda campaign via “news media” to demonize both Putin and Xi. If Putin opened up Russia for American capitalist exploitation as Yeltsin did during the 1990s, then we can be sure Putin would all of a sudden become acceptable and praiseworthy to Washington and the dutiful corporate media.

JR:  The number of spy missions, nuclear-armed bomber flights, and war games near Russia’s borders have vastly increased over the past year. Same with China. Is all of this just business-as-usual geopolitical posturing? Or does it represent a dangerous escalation and a new ominous direction in U.S. strategic positioning? What is the justification for what Russia and China see as provocations and aggressiveness, if not actual preparation for a war?

FC:  President Biden says he does not want confrontation with Russia or China. But look at the practice under his administration. This practice is a continuation of the previous Trump administration and that of Obama too. The US practical policy is one of aggression and tension-stoking. It cannot be anything else because of the inherent nature of its power. There is no legal justification for US policy. It is aggression, which is a crime under international law and in violation of the UN Charter. The US attempts to justify its policy with false claims. For example, it accuses Russia of invading Ukraine and annexing Crimea. Where’s the evidence? The US and NATO powers instigated a coup d’état in Ukraine ousting an elected government in February 2014. That coup threatened ethnic Russian people in Crimea who voted in a referendum in March 2014 to join the Russian Federation with which it had centuries of shared culture. Anyway, it is the US that has funded the Kiev regime with billions of dollars of lethal weaponry. It is the US and NATO who are mounting more military forces and infrastructure on Russia’s borders. It is absolutely reckless warmongering by the US. But such conduct is reflexive for an imperial power. It is irrational for most moral people who desire peace. But the US is a war machine under its prevailing capitalist system.  [Editor’s Note: Finian Cunningham just published an article which expands on this answer. Please enjoy further insights offered in Is There Much Point in Putin or Xi Talking with Biden?]

JR:  Between the FONOPS in the South China Sea and the recently expressed enthusiasm for Taiwan’s independence, the risk of military conflict with China keeps increasing. Where is this headed? If People’s Republic of China decides to use military force for full reunification of Taiwan, do you see the U.S. going to war in an attempt to prevent it?

FC:  I think if Taiwan declares independence due to the relentless goading by the United States under its revealingly named “strategic ambiguity” policy, then China will exert its control over the province by military force. It has the legal right to do so because the world, including the US, recognize China’s territorial sovereignty over Taiwan. A full-on war is a danger, but I think the US will back down because it knows the cost of such a confrontation would be too great for its own economic survival. In other words, China could call Uncle Sam’s bluff to find he has a lousy hand with raised stakes beyond what can be afforded.

JR:  The U.S. against the clear objections of the government in Syria is occupying valuable land, stealing the country’s oil, and preventing access to the most agriculturally productive region, effectively starving the population. The world sees this for what it is, a cruel game sacrificing innocent people for some perceived geopolitical advantage.  Is this the kind of reputation the U.S. wants? Or does it simply no longer care what the rest of the world community thinks?

FC:  This specific country case of Syria and the evident egregious violations by the United States can be taken as proof of the imperialist conduct of the US as argued above. We can argue for ages in the abstract about whether the US is a benign or baleful entity. But Syria shatters any illusions of “benign power” and “exceptional virtue” that US leaders and media have harped on for decades. The myth of mighty noble America is a chimera as its illegal conduct in Syria demonstrates.

JR:  In a democracy, at least in theory, citizens have a say in all matters of public policy. Yet, in the end none of the recent military campaigns and undeclared wars seem to achieve much popular favor or support. What is and what should be the role of everyday citizens in determining the foreign policy and military priorities of the country? Or are such matters better left to the “experts”?

FC:  It may seem naive but foreign policy and conduct should be held accountable to the citizens if democracy was real. The US has been at war in every decade of its 246 years in existence as a modern state. Most of its 46 presidents have presided over wars, invasions, and imperial intrigues of all sort. Since World War II, probably every one of them could be prosecuted as a war criminal. That suggests that up to now the people have had no say nor influence. The powers-that-be, the establishment, the oligarchy, the plutocracy, the deep state – whatever is more fitting – set the policy of war. Presidents are figure heads – albeit complicit and answerable – on the bow of a ship of state that is charted for war. If the US actually constituted a democracy then that inflexible course of war would change. John F Kennedy tried to rein in wars and the Cold War, and ended up being assassinated by the deep state. Decisions of war as in all other vital decisions such as economic policy should reflect the will of the people. That is democracy. But as we know the US is an oligarchy that has presidential elections every four years. Ask yourself, why is that Obama, Trump and now Biden are consistent in pushing aggression towards Russia and China? Where’s the democratic will of the people? It doesn’t exist under the prevailing system of oligarchic power and corporate capitalism. That may change in the future, however, and why not? But it’s going to take an enormous mobilization of ordinary working Americans to transform the status quo into democratic governance. The same also applies to European so-called democracies.

JR:  Related to that, the citizenry and most of Congress are kept in the dark with respect to special missions, proxy funding, CIA operations, and swaths of unknown unknowns constituting psyops, cyber ops, and regime change ops, all done in our name as U.S. citizens.  The funds to support this sprawling “dark world” of sabotage and terror being inflicted on the rest of the planet, is also a secret.  Now there’s pervasive spying on U.S. citizens right here at home.  What place does any of this have in “the land of the free”? Does this mean government of the people, by the people, for the people is just a sham?

FC:  I think you have implicitly answered the question. Of course, the prevailing system is corrupt and anti-democratic and that’s why there is a pervasive illegal effort to survey society and persecute whistleblowers like John Kiriakou, Daniel Hale, Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange and many other honorable truth-tellers. The powers-that-be know they have much to fear from public accountability and so they strive strenuously to suppress public protest and conceal their systematic criminality. Fundamentally, the US power is not just a violation of foreign nations. It is a violation against its own people who suffer from deprived and deformed society as an immensely anti-democratic result. But that is going to change as working people begin to organize and demand their long-overdue rights and indeed eventually compose the governing structures. That may take decades to eventuate, but history is on the side of the struggle for justice and peace.

JR:  Recently we’ve seen some token but precedent-setting direct payments to citizens in the form of Covid relief. There is also the ongoing discussion about reparations to descendants of slaves. If it could be unequivocally established that the government has abused DOD funding, misused and squandered vast sums of money to promote unjustified wars, purchase unneeded equipment, unnecessarily expand U.S. military presence across the globe, and regularly lied to the American public to manufacture consent for these misadventures and  fraudulent activities, practical and political considerations aside, do you see any constitutional or other legal barriers to the public identifying, expecting, or even demanding proper compensation? A cash refund or citizen reparations for massive, authenticated abuse of power?

FC:  The best manifestation of democratic justice would be for the majority of working people in the United States to finally create a government that works for their class interests. Litigate, so to speak, against the entire system by a mass movement of politically conscious workers and their families. Getting rid of the warmongering, oligarchic capitalist system and replacing it with a worker-directed socialist government that shares genuine internationalism with all other nations would be the most effective form of compensation for the many cruel decades of injustice.

*****

John Rachel:  We are grateful to Finian Cunningham for his thought-provoking views. The interview was arranged by John Rachel, Director of the Peace Dividend Project. This effort embraces a powerful, unprecedented, end-to-end strategy for challenging the tyranny of neocon warmongers in Washington DC, ending the endless wars, and reversing the self-destructive foreign policy and military paradigm which now poisons U.S. relations with the rest of the world. We hope to further interview Finian for the full-length Peace Dividend documentary film, a devastating indictment of the corruption and fraud built into our excessive military budgets and imperial overreach. This movie will inform, unite and empower everyday citizens to have a voice in determining the future they want for themselves and their children.

This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

Events are unfolding at a quickening pace. Facing an alarming escalation in tensions around the world, we are looking to our most respected and renowned thought leaders for an honest assessment of both U.S. foreign and military policy to offer their most current thoughts and insights. We know they have some ideas for improving the prospects for peace.

Lee Camp is the head writer and host of the national TV show Redacted Tonight with Lee Camp on RT America. He’s a former contributor to The Onion, former staff humor writer for the Huffington Post, and co-host of the podcast “Government Secrets.” He’s toured the country and the world with his fierce brand of standup comedy and hard-hitting political commentary. His book, Bullet Points & Punch Lines has earned enormous praise. RadMediaNews is his most recent project, an alternative to the propaganda of mainstream media and a vehicle to deal with large-scale suppression of the truth. His responses below are exactly as he provided.

The questions here are not philosophical or abstract. They focus on the realities of the international power struggle unfolding in real time. They directly address the role of the U.S. in the escalating tensions and its capacity to reduce them. We also probe the role of everyday citizens in affecting the relationship the U.S. now has and will have with the rest of the world community.

Here is what Lee Camp had to say.

John Rachel:  The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has recently put the hands of the Doomsday Clock to 100 seconds before midnight. Midnight means all out war, probably nuclear holocaust. This is the closest it has ever been. Do you agree with this dire assessment?

Lee Camp:  I mean, in general midnight is usually when the party gets started – so we should be excited, no? Oh, wait, they’re saying midnight is bad. I get it now. I do think things are quite dire. One of the core problems with our system almost never gets discussed. Capitalism is a system in which true sociopaths inevitably end up running the show. The estimates are that 1 out of every 100 humans is a sociopath – and sociopaths are uniquely suited to succeed at a profit-over-all-else system. So the gravity of capitalism will always pull the most irrational humans to run the systems. This is how we ended up with a political system that vomited up the likes of Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and Barack Obama. Obama’s Pentagon dropped 26,000 bombs his final year in office. Trump’s Pentagon dropped 40,000 his first year in office. I’m sure the Biden numbers aren’t far off. These are war criminals, and yet the mainstream media dances around happily celebrating these villains as if it’s Mardi Gras (Fox News for Trump, the other networks for Biden & Obama).

JR:  The U.S. always portrays itself as the greatest force on the planet for peace, justice, human rights, racial equality, etc. Polls tell us that most other nations actually regard the U.S. as the greatest threat to stability. What in your view is the truth here?

LC:  We are absolutely the greatest force for justice and racial equality. During the hundreds of years we spent kidnapping black people and owning them as property, we always treated each slave as equal to every other slave. So, that’s a great deal of equality right there. Also, our Declaration of Independence said “All men are created equal” and at that time, they were referring to white, land-owning males, who were six percent of the population. So what it really meant was “All six percent of us are created equal.” And my gosh, those white land-owning males were treated SO VERY equal. No one can deny that. . . . Is my sarcasm coming through in writing or not so much? . . . Anyway, what was the question again? Oh yes, is the United States a threat to stability? Absolutely. Not just because we’re literally always at war but also because we are the largest cause of catastrophic climate change, which will cause immense suffering, death, instability, and large scale extinction — all things I’m not a fan of.

JR:  Here’s a chicken-or-egg question: The U.S. accuses both Russia and China of rapidly expanding their military capabilities, claiming its own posturing and increase in weaponry is a response to its hostile adversaries, Russia and China. Both Russia and China claim they are merely responding to intimidation and military threats posed by the U.S.  What’s your view? Do Russia and China have imperial ambitions or are they just trying to defend themselves against what they see as an increasingly aggressive U.S. military?

LC:  Rather than give an opinion, I’ll just give people some facts. The US has roughly 900 military bases around the world. China has a grand total of one outside of China. Russia has around 18, I think, and they’re mostly in the former Soviet bloc. The US spends roughly $1 trillion a year on military (when we include the black budgets), which is the same amount as 144 countries COMBINED. The Pentagon has been found to have roughly $21 trillion in unaccounted-for financial adjustments on their books over the past two decades. To put that in perspective, if you earn $40,000 a year, in order to make $21 trillion, it would take you 525 million years. The Pentagon was finally audited for the first time a few years ago. It took over 1,000 auditors and lasted for over a year. At the end of it, the Pentagon simply said, “We failed our audit.” And that was basically the end of the information given to the public. . . . So yeah, I guess the US is just defending itself from the dastardly Chinese and Russians.

JR:  The U.S. always denies that it has imperial ambitions. Most unbiased experts say that by any objective standards, the U.S. is an empire — indeed the most powerful, sprawling empire in history.  Does the U.S. have to be an empire to be successful in the world and effectively protect and serve its citizenry?

LC:  Well, if you want to decide if the US is an empire, please see previous facts. In terms of “being a success,” the US is not a success. We here in the US face immense inequality (a higher Gini coefficient than Ancient Rome just before its collapse), don’t have universal healthcare, don’t have free college education, face a crippling opioid epidemic, have a political system filled with corruption, and the world’s largest prison state (both total number and per capita). On top of that, late-stage capitalism is killing the environment in the US and around the world. We’ve lost 50% of all wildlife over the past 40 years, the oceans are filling with plastic, 2000 cities in the US have elevated lead in the water, and the insect world is facing a genocide. Under no interpretation of the word, could the US be considered a “success.” A success would be a sustainable society that provides a comfortable and fulfilling future for our grandchildren and their grandchildren. We seem to have the opposite.

JR:  The highest ranking commanders of the U.S. military recently sounded the alarm. They have concluded that the U.S. — widely regarded as the most formidable military power in history — can’t defeat either Russia or China in a war. These military commanders are saying we need to dramatically increase our military capabilities. What do you make of this claim and the resulting demand for more DOD spending?

LC:  (Please see earlier numbers about the amount spent on the military.) Toxic nationalism along with capitalism is destroying the globe. We’re told to hate enemies like Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, etc. Can anyone explain to me why a baby born in Iran is evil and a baby born in the US is wonderful and moral and pure? I haven’t heard a good answer for that, but they want us to believe it.

JR:  In 2009, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton announced a reset with Russia, heralding greater cooperation and understanding.  By 2014, Obama had made a sharp reversal. A sweeping regime of sanctions has since been imposed on Russia to cripple its economy. Hillary Clinton and the Democrats now relentlessly demonize Russia and Putin, blaming them for every imaginable ill. Both in the media and from official pronouncements by government officials, Russia has become the favorite whipping boy for both the U.S. and its “special friend”, Great Britain.  Why?  What happened?

LC:  The US is a waning empire in the turbulence of late-stage capitalism. America doesn’t treat our own citizens well (just look at our insane healthcare system), and therefore the only way to get citizens to ignore their true enemies (the ruling elite), is to convince them the great “other” is out to get them. Hence the War on Terror, the new cold war against Russia and China – each of these propaganda tools helps keep average American citizens in line and willing to give up all of their rights and liberties. The oligarchs are basically saying, “We’re not the ones exploiting you. We’re not the source of your troubles. It’s the Russians. It’s the Chinese. It’s the Syrians.” This is not the only reason for the new cold wars that have been instituted, but it’s definitely one of the important ones.

JR:  The U.S., against the clear objections of the government in Syria, is occupying valuable land, stealing the country’s oil, and preventing access to the most agriculturally productive region, effectively starving the population. The world sees this for what it is, a cruel game sacrificing innocent people for some perceived geopolitical advantage.  Is this the kind of reputation the U.S. wants? Or does it simply no longer care what the rest of the world community thinks?

LC:  The US really only has one playbook. So even though the standard propaganda — The US wants to give you freedom and democracy — has broken down and no longer holds up, the US government keeps pushing it. Meanwhile they have an endless array of economic sanctions on countries (economic war), they’re bombing multiple countries, and they spend billions on CIA cutouts trying to create coups in various nations. They’ve invaded, destroyed, or “coup’ed” numerous countries — most commonly those who are outside our central banking system and/or are socialist. Yet, when a US official walks up to that podium, they still say, “We need to bring democracy to  ___[fill in country]__.”

JR:  In a democracy, at least in theory, citizens have a say in all matters of public policy. Yet, in the end none of the recent military campaigns and undeclared wars seem to achieve much popular favor or support. What is and what should be the role of everyday citizens in determining the foreign policy and military priorities of the country? Or are such matters better left to the “experts”?

LC:  I’ll do you one better. For much of what our Pentagon’s actions — not even elected officials have a say. Congress rarely intervenes in military matters. They no longer declare wars, even though they’re supposed to. Even the president doesn’t oversee most military intelligence actions. He may have some say in whether we start bombing a country, but 99% of the Pentagon’s behavior is not scrutinized by the President or Congress. On top of that, no one seems to know where the money goes. As I said earlier, trillions of dollars are floating around and thousands of auditors can’t even get to the bottom of it. Whistleblowers have said that when they were serving in Iraq or Afghanistan, they would be given bundles of millions of dollars to hand out and no one kept track of where it went. In Afghanistan we were paying the Taliban and fighting the Taliban. We were paying the opium growers and fighting the opium growers. The only book that does this insanity justice is Joseph Heller’s novel Catch-22.

JR:  Now there’s pervasive spying on U.S. citizens right here at home.  What place does any of this have in “the land of the free”? Does this mean government of the people, by the people, for the people is just a sham?

LC:  Yes, it’s a sham. The government can’t truly represent the people unless the people know what the government is up to. But we’re not told most of what the government does. And when a whistleblower reveals what our government is up to — or a journalist like Julian Assange — they’re horribly persecuted and imprisoned. Furthermore, even if you wanted to claim we have a free democracy in the US, the two corporate parties agree on 90% of the core issues of our country. They agree on capitalism, on militarism, on Wall Street, on environmental destruction, on unlimited surveillance, on a massive prison state, on dystopian policing — they agree on just about everything. So if our choice is between those two parties, then it’s no choice at all. None of our elections are legit in this regard.

JR:  Recently we’ve seen some token but precedent-setting direct payments to citizens in the form of Covid relief. There is also the ongoing discussion about reparations to descendants of slaves. If it could be unequivocally established that the government has abused DOD funding, misused and squandered vast sums of money to promote unjustified wars, purchase unneeded equipment, unnecessarily expand U.S. military presence across the globe, and regularly lied to the American public to manufacture consent for these misadventures and  fraudulent activities, practical and political considerations aside, do you see any constitutional or other legal barriers to the public identifying, expecting, or even demanding proper compensation? A cash refund or citizen reparations for massive, authenticated abuse of power?

LC:  I’ll go beyond that. I believe Universal Basic Income is both doable right now and would save millions of lives. It would instantly end homelessness, extreme poverty, hunger, and a large percentage of health problems. Ending those things would also greatly decrease crime. Furthermore, UBI already exists in Alaska and other smaller examples. However, this is not to say it would solve all the problems with capitalism. It would not. Having an economic system that pushes everyone to seek profit over all else will ultimately destroy everything eventually. Capitalism requires infinite growth on a finite planet. By definition, it cannot sustain, and we’re already seeing signs of environmental collapse. We need a mental revolution, an evolution of what is possible. And we need it now.

*****

JR:  We are grateful to Lee Camp for his thought-provoking views. The interview was arranged by John Rachel, Director of the Peace Dividend Project. This effort embraces a powerful, unprecedented, end-to-end strategy for challenging the tyranny of neocon warmongers in Washington DC, ending the endless wars, and reversing the self-destructive foreign policy and military paradigm which now poisons U.S. relations with the rest of the world. Lee has also agreed to be interviewed for the full-length Peace Dividend documentary film, a devastating indictment of the corruption and fraud built into our excessive military budgets and imperial overreach. This movie will inform, unite and empower everyday citizens to have a voice in determining the future they want for themselves and their children.

This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.