Image by Unseen Histories.

Upon passage of HB 87 Texas will require students to read Jefferson’s 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists in which the third President states the principle of the separation of church and state and proclaims “the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions”. At the same time this law prohibits teachers from telling students that “slavery and racism are anything other than deviations from, betrayals of, or failures to live up to, the authentic founding principles of the United States”. Such head-spinning duplicity could be explained glibly by wondering if Texas Republicans ever read Jefferson’s missive to the Baptists. But much more is revealed by taking this and other similar bills moving through state legislatures throughout Red America as deliberate and serious expressions of modern conservatism.

Texas’ bill, and similar GOP legislation elsewhere, began as a knee-jerk reaction to the popularity among educators of the New York Times’ 1619 Project and right-wing media click-bait stories of the horrors of multicultural workshops and diversity training. Conservatives have lumped all these approaches to analyzing the dynamics of racism under the umbrella of “Critical Race Theory” (CRT) which Idaho has legally condemned for “inflame[ing] divisions on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin, or other criteria in ways contrary to the unity of the nation”. When the legislative template for these bills was crafted it came to reflect certain novel aspects of the conservative mind as it has been shaped by evangelicalism, Newt Gingrich, the Tea Party, Fox News, Trump, and Q-anon.

Texas’ HB 87 declares that the purpose of social studies education is to “develop each student ’s civic knowledge” of “the fundamental moral, political, and intellectual foundations of the American experiment”. The key word here is “the”, as in “the fundamental moral, political, and intellectual foundations”, strongly implying that there was some unity, some sort of consensus about moral and political principles at the founding. To view American society in 1776 as having anything approaching agreement about what constituted morality or the proper basis of government requires ignoring the deep factional fights within patriot ranks that eventually festered into America’s first party system, the many dissenting religious groups, and the views of the one in five Americans who were legally property. Lurking in this idea of “civic knowledge” is a mandate to consider only land-owning whites as constituting “the American experiment”.

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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Timothy Messer-Kruse.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

Gaza under attack stories; war 2021

Image by Dan Meyers.

Aya’s Story

My name is Aya al-Louh. I live in Gaza City and I am a cancer patient. I have a brother, Mahmoud, 26 years old, with special needs. He is unable to leave the house due to the constant bombing and we are trying to integrate him with us so that he is not affected by the continuous missile strikes. He cannot sleep, not even during the day. Every moment he suffers from Psychiatric disorders, we uselessly try to control it, once he hears the sound of explosions.

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Image by Josh Carter.

Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:

I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.

-Robert Frost, “Birches” (1916)

Suzanne Simard is a professor in the Faculty of Forestry at the University of British Columbia. She conducts research in a number of related ecological areas, including forest ecology, plant-soil microbial interactions, plant-plant interactions, ectomycorrhizae, and mycorrhizal networks.

In her new book, Finding the Mother Tree, she describes them, thusly:

[between trees] “both neural networks and mycorrhizal networks transmit information molecules across synapses …The mycorrhizal networks could have the signature of intelligence. At the hub of the neural network in the forest were the Mother Trees, as central to the lives of the smaller trees as I was to [my young daughters]. ‘

She’s a leader in The Mother Tree Project, a “guiding principle of retaining Mother Trees and maintaining connections within forests to keep them regenerative, especially as the climate changes.” She grew up in British Columbia’s rain forests. She comes from a family of lumberjacks, but after a first job out of college working for a clear-cut lumber company and was appalled at the lack of personal indifference to the environment being cleared.

This interview was conducted on May 26, 2021.

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On June 18, 2019, then-candidate Joe Biden appeared on the campaign trail at a posh fundraiser on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. He remarked to about a hundred prospective wealthy donors that if elected, “nothing will fundamentally change.” In the context of the quote, Biden was referencing their pocketbooks and stock portfolios under his leadership. As […]

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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Jack Delaney.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

India, the pharmacy of the world is currently facing a devastating second wave of the COVID pandemic. With a surge in infections crossing the 400,000 mark on a daily basis, the population of over a billion people were pinning its hopes on the ongoing vaccination drive. This, as the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, is staring More

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This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Sumedha Pal.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.

India, the pharmacy of the world is currently facing a devastating second wave of the COVID pandemic. With a surge in infections crossing the 400,000 mark on a daily basis, the population of over a billion people were pinning its hopes on the ongoing vaccination drive. This, as the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, is staring More

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This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

For anyone disturbed by the number of U.S. military bases abroad, roughly 800, it comes as little solace to learn that this high concentration of military outposts has a long genealogy, one that stretches back to the first days of the republic. Because back then we had forts, bristling with guns and soldiers, on other More

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This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

For anyone disturbed by the number of U.S. military bases abroad, roughly 800, it comes as little solace to learn that this high concentration of military outposts has a long genealogy, one that stretches back to the first days of the republic. Because back then we had forts, bristling with guns and soldiers, on other More

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This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.

Image by Mufid Majnun.

Under the rightwing presidency of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazilians are once again witnessing intimidation tactics against anyone who speaks out against his government. Bolsonaro and his administration have attacked the press, specific journalists, a Supreme Court justice, opposition leaders, the health and science institution FIOCRUZ, and many others. This disturbing trend has just targeted two indigenous leaders. However, this latest strategy failed.

Brazil’s Federal Police agency subpoenaed Sônia Guajajara, the executive coordinator for the Articulation Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB) on April 26 to respond to charges of slander as well as the dissemination of fake news. These accusations are the result of her appearance in a 2020 eight-part web documentary series called Maracá. In it, Guajajara, along with dozens of other natives, activists, artists, and academics denounced numerous health protocol violations committed against indigenous communities by drawing links between Brazil’s 521 years of genocidal history to the current COVID-19 pandemic.

“I was intimidated by the federal police, as a representative of @apiboficial to testify in an inquiry about the Maracá web series,” Guajajara shared on Twitter on April 30, about the police action. “The persecution from this government is unacceptable and absurd! They won’t silence us!” she added. Guajajara was a Socialism and Liberty Party candidate during the 2018 Presidential elections and has been a fierce critic of Bolsonaro and his administration’s indigenous and environmental policies, and its handling of the pandemic.

Brazil’s federal police also summoned Almir Narayamoga Suruí, an indigenous Chief of the Paiter Suruí peoples, over allegations of defamation against Bolsonaro’s government. The National Indigenous Foundation (FUNAI), the Brazilian government agency created in 1967 under the Ministry of Justice to protect Indigenous peoples’ rights, filed both charges in mid-March.

After Guajajara’s tweet, dozens of politicians, organizations, and allies of indigenous communities expressed outrage over the government’s strategy. Former President Luis Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva tweeted, “It is the government of lies chasing and trying to intimidate those who denounce the truth. They won’t win. My solidarity, @GuajajaraSonia.” Former Green Party Presidential Candidate, Mariana da Silva also expressed indignation by writing, “Once again I register my repudiation of the arbitrary and intimidating acts of the Bolsonaro government. My solidarity with @GuajajaraSonia and @narayamoga.”

APIB also released a statement denouncing the act as political and racist persecution to “criminalize the indigenous movement, intimidate [APIB], our network of grassroots organizations, and the leadership of Sônia Guajajara.”

With the overwhelming attention and counter lawsuits, a federal judge suspended the police probe into Guajajara on May 5 citing no indication of a crime being committed. And on May 6, the federal police decided to archive Almir Suruí’s case.

Celebrating these favorable decisions, Guajajara shared a video on social media thanking for all the support given to the indigenous movement and APIB that were targeted for resisting “against the constant violations of [our] rights and neglect by the Federal Government.”

Here is the background of how these two cases unfolded.

During an episode of the series Maracá called Healing Plan, Guajajara is heard speaking during a United Nations meeting in New York on April 2019 explaining how Brazil’s indigenous peoples honed the craft of resistance:

“…with the European caravels arrived swords and greed and the idea that we were not masters of our own lands and lives. Despite the genocide over these five hundred years, we have managed to reach the 21^st century.” She added, “During this period, many of us were enslaved, hundreds of people were decimated, and several cultures extinguished. The Europeans treated us as merchandise, or as a major obstacle to their idea of progress. We resisted the colonial period. We resisted the empire. We resisted even the military dictatorship [1964-1985], which killed more than 8,000 indigenous people.”

Last year, APIB released Maracá as part of an international campaign to save indigenous lives and to highlight Bolsonaro’s mismanagement of the pandemic. The organization submitted the same complaints last August to Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court, which ruled in favor of the indigenous groups, and determined that the federal government must implement measures to contain the spread of the virus in indigenous communities. APIB is a grassroots organization that represents some 300 indigenous ethnic groups in Brazil. It was founded in 2005 with the mission to unify interests, strengthen communities, and advocate for indigenous rights.

In March FUNAI sent a slander complaint against Guajajara and Almir Suruí to the federal police, and on April 26, a federal agent contacted her to respond to the charges.

Following Guajajara probe, the federal police also questioned Almir Suruí on April 30. He was similarly being charged with defamation for seeking financial help to fight the pandemic during a virtual campaign from September 2020 called “Forest Peoples against COVID-19.”

“We are always saying that the government has not dealt with indigenous issues in a respectful way, [especially] when it comes to indigenous policy and land management. But this is not defamation,” he told columnist Rubens Valente. “They want us to back off, but we are going to continue fighting,” he added.

Then a federal agent called Almir’s nephew, Rubens Suruí about the virtual campaign. “I was surprised,” Rubens told the columnist. “The action was to collect funds to help the Paiter Suruí peoples to stay on their land during the pandemic and not have to go to the cities and get contaminated. [It was also used] to buy cleaning products and food,” he explained.

Ramirez Andrade, the lawyer representing the Paiter Suruí peoples, told Valente that the interrogation of both men by the federal police via the popular texting software, “WhatsApp” was not a standard procedure. “This is an unprecedented, unusual situation,” the lawyer said. He added, “the strange thing is to investigate a relief campaign and use it to say that, when asking for help, the indigenous people would be defaming the government.”

On May 6, the federal police announced they had stopped investigating Almir.

Although the Brazilian native rights’ movement succeeded on these two cases, activists have refused to acquiesce. That’s because Bolsonaro and his administration are still targeting their critics and they remain in charge of the COVID crisis in Brazil, which has had devastating impacts on indigenous communities.

Handling of the Pandemic

The indigenous leaders’ characterization of Bolsonaro’s mishandling of the pandemic is not an exaggeration. On April 12, 2021, Brazil’s Senate opened a Parliamentary Committee Inquiry (CPI) to investigate “actions and omissions by the federal government in facing the pandemic and the collapse of the healthcare system” across the country. With the ongoing inquiry, indigenous communities also want to be heard. They are seeking ways to expose how their people have been treated during the pandemic and the lack of the federal government’s response to combat the virus from reaching their lands.

On April 30, Joênia Wapichana, the first indigenous Congresswoman elected to office, presented data and complaints from indigenous organizations during a Senate public hearing. At the meeting she requested that the CPI called upon others to testify, including authorities responsible for the implementation of local and national indigenous healthcare protocols, indigenous leaders, and victims’ family members. In her view this administration committed “gross mistakes, omission, denialism and even prejudice” against indigenous communities and needs to be scrutinized.

“It got to a point when I didn’t want to look at my cell phone due to sadness [because] there were messages about indigenous deaths and reports that many were dying due to lack of drugs for intubation,” Wapichana commented at the hearing.

According to APIB’s epidemiological bulletin as of May 7, more than 53,641 cases and 1,063 deaths have been confirmed amongst indigenous communities. Brazil has about 850,000 indigenous peoples, representing a .4% of the country’s population.

The Congresswoman also handed over other complaints to Senators, which include the lack of access to clean water and adequate sanitary conditions at an indigenous shelter; an increase of illegal mining in indigenous lands during the pandemic; accounts that a health employee was selling COVID-vaccines to miners for gold instead of inoculating indigenous communities; low vaccination rates due to ‘fake news’ disseminated by President Bolsonaro and religious groups; lack of intensive care units and oxygen; and the militarization of indigenous healthcare’s management, which prescribed the use of the drug hydroxychloroquine to treat infected indigenous people.

Although the allegation about the military’s distribution of the hydroxychloroquine drug to indigenous communities is being discussed at the CPI, as of today, indigenous peoples have not been invited to testify about it or how the pandemic crisis has affected them. And despite these two victories, Bolsonaro’s critics see these latest police charges as yet another tactic to censor and intimidate them and expect to be targeted again.

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Image by Li-An Lim.

President Joe Biden announced on Earth Day that under the Paris climate agreement, the United States will pledge a 50-percent reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions by 2030. He also reiterated his intention to “set a course” toward “net zero emissions economy-wide” by 2050.

This was a welcome change from life under the previous president, who had rejected all action on climate, even the toothless Paris emissions pledges (known to bureaucrats everywhere as “Nationally Determined Contributions,” or NDCs). Yet there are at least three things wrong with Biden’s climate vision: a 50 percent emissions reduction by 2030 is too slow; the “net zero emissions by 2050” goal is no more than a euphemism for continued burning of fossil fuels; and the president has not articulated any strategy or mechanism for achieving even these overly modest goals. In other words, there’s no plan in the Biden plan.

The only strategy, it seems, is to infuse the U.S. economy with trillions of dollars of funds for energy and other infrastructure, then hand the keys over to the corporate sector and wait for them to figure out how to wean the economy off of fossil fuels.

The Biden pledge to cut emissions in half within a decade has wowed the media, but it’s not as impressive as it seems. That reduction is relative to the year 2005, when our national emissions were significantly higher than they are now. The neat, round-number pledge of 50 percent takes credit, so to speak, for reductions that are already in the bag. Set those aside, and Biden’s goal is to cut current emissions by just 43 percent.

A 43-percent pledge falls well short of what is needed. The latest edition of the authoritative United Nations’ Emissions Gap Report shows that to give the Earth a fighting chance to avoid catastrophic heating of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial temperatures, we must, between 2021 and 2030, shrink global emissions by 57 percent. The NDC pledges of all nations combined, noted the report, would come nowhere close to achieving that necessary reduction. Adding in the Biden pledge, which came four months after the UN report was published, doesn’t substantially change the dismal math.

Annual U.S. greenhouse emissions remain second-highest in the world, and our cumulative historical contribution to atmospheric carbon is the largest of any nation; therefore, we have a moral obligation to make cuts that are much larger on a percentage basis than the minimum necessary global reductions. The Biden targets effectively shirk that responsibility. Whereas the Emissions Gap Report calls, as a minimum, for an almost 60 percent decrease from today’s global emissions, the Biden target would, by 3030, sustain U.S. emissions at almost 60 percent of today’s oversized greenhouse-gas output.

The “net zero” head-fake

Over time, government and industry have adopted ever more inventive circumlocutions designed to make climate-mitigation measures and technologies sound a lot more impressive than they are. (My favorite example is featured in an EPA-certified decal on the left rear window of our fourteen-year-old Honda Civic hybrid sedan: PARTIAL ZERO EMISSIONS VEHICLE.) Now in recent years, with the point of no return for decisive climate action fast approaching, the designers of climate policy have converged on a term that, while comprising only seven letters, is big enough to contain all of our hopes: “net zero.”

The adoption of “net zero” grows out of a longstanding desire to keep burning fossil fuels for decades to come—especially in power plants, where coal and gas are able to provide the steady, continuous “base load” that wind and solar sources cannot support. That desire is wrapped within another seemingly ambitious Biden’s pledge: to achieve a “carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035.” In this context, “carbon-free” is not the same as fossil-fuel-free.

Biden himself has noted that fossil-fueled power stations can be made ostensibly “carbon-free” by capturing exhaust from the smokestack, extracting almost all the CO₂, and injecting it belowground. This has not actually been done in practice (except as a technique for extracting more oil, which does not reduce emissions), but just the idea of carbon burial has long enabled governments and utilities to formulate “net zero by year X” emissions targets.

In contrast, another nominally “net zero” process, electricity generation from plant biomass, has been widely adopted in the U.S. and elsewhere. The European Union classifies biomass burning as “renewable,” so over the past decade, biomass, mostly in the form of wood pellets, has come to account for well over half of the union’s “carbon-free” electricity supply. But, as always, there’s a catch. The wood is obtained mostly from live trees, leading to extensive deforestation in Eastern Europe. In Estonia, the land-use sector, which includes forestry, is traditionally a net accumulator of carbon from the atmosphere. Now, with extensive clearcutting underway to feed Europe’s power plants, Estonia’s forest lands are on course to become a net carbon emitter by 2030.

As it has become increasingly clear that neither old-school carbon capture nor electricity-from-biomass alone will be sufficient to achieve “net zero” emissions economy-wide, strategists have gravitated toward the clever idea of combining bioenergy with carbon sequestration, the goal being to achieve not just carbon neutrality but a net reduction of emissions. In the concept called “bioenergy with carbon capture and storage” (BECCS), harvests from large plantations of trees or other high-yield biomass crops would be dried and pelletized, hauled to power plants, and burned like coal to produce electricity, as in the EU’s “renewable” system. But with BECCS, the CO₂ emitted from the biomass-fed power plants would be captured and buried before escaping the smokestack.

BECCS would be aimed at a double win: reduction of atmospheric CO₂ plus electricity generation. But closer examination shows that it would fail on both counts, delivering less net energy and capturing less net carbon than promised. That’s because vast quantities of energy would have to be expended in growing and harvesting biomass crops, hauling the biomass to the processing factory, grinding and pelletizing, hauling pellets to the power plant, sucking CO₂ out of the smokestack, liquefying the CO₂, hauling the liquid to an abandoned oil or gas well, and injecting it under high pressure.

Energy expenditures for all of those processes would, in sum, reduce the net energy produced by the BECCS power plant by 25 to 100 percent. If the energy input comes from fossil fuels (as would be the case well into the future), a goodly portion of the carbon-capture benefits of BECCS also would be canceled out.

Growing the plantations to feed BECCS would do the kind of ecological and social damage to the entire Earth that Europe’s biomass-burning is doing to Estonia. To pull less than one-third of human-produced CO₂ emissions out of the atmosphere would require the planting of bioenergy crops on as much land as is already used to grow the world’s food, feed, and fiber crops. As much as half of all natural forests, grasslands, and savannahs could be lost, wiping out more biodiversity than would die off with a global temperature rise of 2+ degrees above pre-industrial levels—the very scale of disaster that carbon sequestration is aimed at preventing.

Planting and harvesting vast new acreages of biomass crops would also break down organic matter in soils, releasing CO₂ into the atmosphere and canceling out a big portion of what’s being captured. Indeed, if very large natural landscapes are brought into production of feedstocks for BECCS, the whole project could become a net carbon emitter.

It’s not surprising, given these problems, that there are no full-scale BECCS facilities in operation; nevertheless, the very idea that they can be deployed in the future will be incorporated into climate models to claim the theoretical possibility of “net zero by 2050” for a long time to come—or at least until 2045 or so.

As it becomes clearer that world-scale biomass burning would be a fiasco, those seeking an alternative route to “net zero” (including Biden) have latched onto the idea of pulling CO₂ directly out of thin air, in an industrial process known as “direct-air capture.” But the technology is not safely applicable at large scale, and it has impossibly large energy requirements.

James Dyke, Robert Watson, and Wolfgang Knorr of the University of Exeter, the University of East Anglia, and Lund University, respectively, have been researching climate change for decades but they’d never raised objections to “net zero” claims until this year’s Earth Day, when they published an article admitting that “the premise of net zero is deceptively simple – and we admit that it deceived us.” Their conclusion: “We have arrived at the painful realization that the idea of net zero has licensed a recklessly cavalier ‘burn now, pay later’ approach which has seen carbon emissions continue to soar. It has also hastened the destruction of the natural world by increasing deforestation today, and greatly increases the risk of further devastation in the future.”

If legislation emerges from the Biden climate plan as it’s currently conceived, its Congressional sponsors should level with the American people and call it the “Not Zero by 2050 Act.”

A hole that must be plugged

The gaping hole in the middle of Biden’s climate vision—a deficiency shared by the Green New Deal and almost all other such plans—is the lack of any policy to directly phase out the extraction and burning of fossil fuels on a strict deadline.

Instead, the mainstream climate movement is counting on indirect nudges from market competition, carbon pricing, disinvestment, etc., along with partial withdrawal of federal support for fossil fuels (by, for example, ending subsidies to the industry or banning new leases for exploration and drilling on federal land).

If our nation and world had committed to such measures in, say, 1990, when the world was just waking up to climate change, there might have been enough time for such gradualist policies to have an impact. But if, at this late date, high-emitting countries were at long last to drag themselves across the starting line and declare ambitious 2030 emissions targets, it would be much too late for market nudges and regulatory half-measures to succeed.

The 2020 Emissions Gap Report notes that if the world were to begin cutting emissions tomorrow, the rate of reduction required to stay below 1.5 degrees of warming would have to be four times as fast as the rate that would have been required had we started just in 2010. An 8 percent annual decrease in fossil fuel use will be obligatory through the 2020s and beyond, and that can be achieved only through nationalization of the fossil fuel industries, followed by imposition of mandatory, fast-falling limits on the numbers of barrels of oil, cubic feet of gas, and tons of coal coming out of the ground and into the economy each year. I realize that such a proposal would be a non-starter in the current White House and Congress. But that doesn’t change the fact that such steep reductions are necessary.

When the new White House fact sheet on the climate plan tells us there are “multiple paths” to reaching “carbon free” electricity and other goals “while supporting a strong economy,” it’s not talking about eliminating fossil fuels; rather, it’s implicitly referring to reliance on gimmicks like carbon-capture schemes or forest-based offset programs. (Under the latter, landowners can simply refrain from cutting their trees and thereby earn carbon credits that they sell to utilities or other companies, which can use the credits as permits to keep burning fossil fuels. The result is an overall increase in emissions.) Electric utilities are counting on the continued federal laxity toward fossil energy as they make plans to build a staggering 235 new natural gas–fired power plants in coming years.

As if tolerating fossil fuels was not dangerous enough, the White House fact sheet also assumes a continued dependence on nuclear energy—not only to help cobble together a nominally “carbon-free” power sector but also for generating “green hydrogen” that can be burned to, among other things, keep the airline industry aloft.

The fact sheet furthermore declares an intention to “ship American-made, clean energy products — like EV batteries— around the world.” In other words, U.S. companies will increase their imports of lithium, cobalt, rare earths, and other metals—mined and processed in other lands at incalculable ecological and humanitarian costs—in order to manufacture and export electric-vehicle batteries at a sweet “green” profit.

With a quest underway to replace the entire U.S. fleet of private cars and trucks with hundreds of millions of battery-powered vehicles while soon attempting to equip a brand-new national electric grid with at least 6 trillion pounds worth of batteries, I doubt that U.S. corporations will even have any surplus batteries to export under Biden’s plan. And I do not expect that either our current case of battery fever or the broader pursuit of mineral resources required by the entire high-tech “green” infrastructure will end well.

Those resources, like oil, are non-renewable and, like oil, most of them lie under someone else’s soil. America’s desperation to satisfy its prodigious energy appetite by pursuing fossil fuels across the globe over the past century led to political oppression and repeated military invasions—a dirty history of imperialism that could continue, this time with the prize being metals. Writing for CounterPunch way back in 2014, Don Fitz warned of “green wars” over minerals for use in renewable energy, asking,

Would the Green World Order mean that Venezuela might have less reason to fear an invasion aimed at gaining access to its heavy oils? Or, would it mean an additional invasion of Bolivia to grab its lithium for green batteries? Would northern Africa no longer need to fear attacks to secure Libyan oil? Or, would new green armies to secure solar collectors for European energy be added to existing armies? Across the globe, those marching with the red, white and blue banner of the War for Oil would continue to invade. But they could be joined by those marching with a green banner.

Which FDR will show up?

In April, an array of civil society organizations that included Friends of the Earth U.S. and the Sunrise Movement submitted a report titled “United States of America: Fair Shares Nationally Determined Contribution” to the UN body overseeing the Paris agreement. The report urges a 70 percent cut in U.S. emissions by 2030. That is a much more robust NDC than Biden proposes, and it’s also more realistic—not realistic in the current political context, of course, but rather in its acknowledgement that very aggressive action will be necessary if we are to avoid a torrid 2-degree future.

While the U.S. and other affluent countries need to go on an energy diet, the majority of people in many other countries, many of them in Africa and South Asia, are starved of energy, whether from fossil or renewable sources. At the same time, many face severe exposure and vulnerability to climate disruption. Accordingly, the Fair Shares report calls for Washington to provide $800 billion over the next decade in climate reparations to low-income countries for mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage. In addition, it proposes up to $3 trillion to help those countries implement the UN Sustainable Development Goals and Paris Agreement goals.

On the downside, the Fair Shares report has a deficiency in common with the Biden non-plan and the Green New Deal. It suggests no surefire mandatory mechanism to fulfill its goal of driving fossil fuel use down by 70 percent by 2030 and down to (real) zero in time to avoid catastrophe.

We are faced with an urgent need to completely ditch our primary sources of energy—oil, gas, and coal—on a crash schedule and partially replace them with new systems. Given the urgency, we do not have the luxury of reducing fossil-fuel use at the same gradual rate at which non-fossil energy capacity, with its wholly new, coast-to-coast electric grid big enough to support “the electrification of everything,” can be built.

Fossil fuels will have to be phased out at a rate that can prevent catastrophic warming—that is, much faster than a new renewable-energy system can be developed to compensate. Therefore, the necessary energy transformation will, by necessity, be a time of smaller total energy supply.

The White House’s climate ambitions don’t follow such logic. They aim to satisfy, throughout the transition, as much energy demand as the market can bear. Whether that entails “multiple paths to carbon-free” or “net zero,” the result will be long-term dependence on fossil fuels and nuclear energy. A direct, mandatory, accelerated phase-out of fossil fuels would rule out such self-delusion, bringing us face to face with our predicament and spurring creative adaptation to a new, low-energy reality.

Like the Green New Deal, the Biden vision has some laudable features that really will be essential to getting us through the coming decades. We do need a buildup (modest, not overblown) of non-fossil energy sources. Even more importantly, provisions to ensure economic justice, security, and equity for the non-affluent majority are all urgently needed.

In calling for such policies as part of broader infrastructure legislation, President Biden has explicitly invoked the example of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who fostered Congress’s passage in his first term of the National Industrial Recovery Act, the Works Progress Administration, the Social Security Act, the National Labor Relations Act, and the Civilian Conservation Corps.

Now that he is embracing forceful government action to solve urgent problems, Biden must be pushed further, to recognize the need for a federal cap-and-adapt policy that rapidly phases out fossil fuels while managing the consequences with economic fairness and sufficiency. In that, he would have to emulate not just the FDR of 1933-35 but the FDR of 1941 as well.

By 1941, I’m referring not to the armament buildup for World War II but rather to the federal government’s redirection of the civilian economy toward restraint in the use of scarce energy and material resources, the allocation of those resources toward essential goods and services, and the guarantee, through rationing, of universal, fair, equitable access to food and energy.

Biden’s hundred-days speech to Congress on April 28, and the broader Democratic legislative agenda, suggest that the party has explicitly abandoned the idea that the market can solve our thorniest problems in areas of economic inequality, racial justice, health care, and other issues. The global ecological emergency requires that Washington likewise ditch the naïve belief that markets can end the fossil-fuel plague. That hole in our climate policies must be plugged immediately.

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The Belgian colonizers transformed Congo into a slave-state for rubber and ivory. So-called Congo Free State (État indépendant du Congo) existed as a private colony of King Leopold II (1835-1909) until the Belgian government took over in 1908. Belgian rule killed an estimated 10 million people. Post-independence, the country split into what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC, known for a time as Zaire,) and the Republic of Congo (a.k.a., Congo-Brazzaville).

This article mainly concerns the DRC, which has a population of 91 million. With a GDP of just $50 billion a year and an extreme poverty rate of over 70 percent, it is one of the poorest nations on Earth. The infant mortality rate is 66 per 1,000 live births—one of the worst in the world, life expectancy is 60 years, and per 100k people maternal mortality is over 690. Conflicts from 1996 to the present, plus the resultant malnutrition and disease, have killed six million people.

Like their Franco-Belgian predecessors, the main interest of U.S. imperialists in DRC, on which this article focuses is Katanga, the uranium- and coltan-rich, south-eastern region that borders Angola and Zambia.

THE MINE

Congolese were not passive victims. Although 80 percent of the population is Bantu, DRC has some 200 ethnic communities. The majority of other groups include Kongo, Luba, Lunda, and Mongo. Belgian hegemons struggled to force the diverse country to accept a national identity. For instance, in 1920s’ Kinshasa, the Simonist Christian movement, Kimbanguism, encouraged resistance to the Europeans. A decade later, the ethnic Bapende (a.k.a., Pende) went on strike in Kwilu Province in the west of the country.

Secessionist Katanga in the south contained uranium deposits, particularly at Shinkolobwe. The mine was owned by Belgium’s Union Minière, in which the UK had investments. The best U.S. and Canadian uranium mines typically yielded 0.03 percent uranium per ore deposit. Shinkolobwe’s uranium averaged 65 percent, making it unique. Uranium at the mine was used in the all-important nuclear weapons industry. Western intelligence agencies wanted to deprive the Soviets of access.

The U.S. struck a secret deal with Union Minière to supply uranium for use in the Manhattan Project (1942-46). The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which also initially headed the Manhattan Project, set up base at Shinkolobwe to drain the mine and export the uranium. The bombs that murdered hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 were built with uranium extracted from Shinkolobwe.

The CIA opened a desk in Léopoldville (now Kinshasa the capital) in 1951. From Kwilu and other Provinces (then “districts”) grew the Parti Solidaire Africain (African Mutual Party), a leftish, pro-independence movement led by future PM Antoine Gizenga (1925-2019). Gizenga allied with Patrice Lumumba’s Congolese National Movement (Mouvement national Congolais, MNC), founded in 1958 and whose members included Joseph-Désiré Mobutu (1930-97).

Mobutu (later Mobutu Sese Seko) was a high-ranking Army officer and asset of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. A CIA report from November 1959 bemoans the lack of control by the Belgian authorities. This led the way for “political groups [that] want immediate independence, while tribal leaders [are] interested primarily perpetuating [their] own local authority.” The CIA describes this as Congo’s “absence [of] responsible African leadership.” The Washington Post writes that “Mobutu first became an ‘asset’ of the CIA in 1959 during a meeting in Brussels,” but gives no further details.

Future President Joseph Kasavubu (1915-69) led the ethnic ABAKO party (Association des BaKongo), which the Belgians banned. Under Prime Minister Lumumba’s MNC umbrella, Kasavubu became President and Gizenga Deputy PM. Sgt-Maj. Mobutu continued to lead the Army (Force Publique). The Parti Solidaire Africain began to fall apart as the MNC declared Congo’s independence from Belgium on June 30^th, 1960. The Force Publique was renamed Congolese Army (Armée Nationale Congolaise, ANC).

LUMUMBA: “AVOID ANOTHER CUBA”

The U.S. State Department’s Office of the Historian writes that the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration (1953-61) “had high hopes that [Congo] would form a stable, pro-Western, central government. Those hopes vanished in a matter of days as the newly independent nation descended into chaos.” It notes that, “[w]hile the United States supported the U.N. effort, members of the Eisenhower administration [grew] increasingly concerned that the Congo crisis would provide an opening for Soviet intervention.”

Mobutu refused to back Lumumba’s government. Moïse Tshombé (1919-69) co-founded the Confederation of Tribal Associations of Katanga (Confédération des associations tribales du Katanga, CONAKAT). In July 1960, Tshombé declared Katanga independent from Congo. The Belgian colonizers figured that if they couldn’t control Congo, they could at least retain the most important region.

U.S. Director of Central Intelligence, John McCone (1902-91) was a businessman sent to lead the Agency by President Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs debacle (1961). Against the wishes of Ambassador G. McMurtrie Godley (1917-99), McCone insisted on continuing U.S. covert operations in Congo, particularly fostering closer relations with Tshombé. McCone told Secretary of State Dean Rusk (1909-94): “we should not be deterred from this by the persuasion of do-gooders, by reactions from African states in the United Nations who didn’t like us anyway.”

Under United Nations Security Council Resolution 143 (1960), the U.N., led by Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld (1905-61), demanded the withdrawal of Belgian troops and sent armed forces. Lumumba pushed Hammarskjöld to use the forces to quell Tshombé rebellion, but Hammarskjöld refused and PM Lumumba (1925-61) sought military assistance from the Soviets.

In 1960, the CIA’s Station Chief in Léopoldville, Lawrence Devlin (1922-2008, alias Victor Hedgman or Hedgeman), cabled Washington. “[Congo is] experiencing classic communist effort [to] takeover government. Whether or not Lumumba actually [is a] commie or just playing commie game[s] to assist solidifying power, anti-West forces [are] rapidly increasing power … [T]here may be little time left in which take action [to] avoid another Cuba.”

In May, the CIA admitted that there are “no known Communists among Congo leaders,” but the Agency suspected sympathies. It acknowledged that “post-independence [Soviet] bloc aid may push Congo toward bloc-oriented neutralism.” The CIA wanted Congo in the U.S. sphere, not neutral. Contrary to the mythology pushed the likes of CIA Director Allen Dulles (1893-1969) and Léopoldville Station Chief Devlin, that Lumumba was a Soviet asset, a July 1960 National Security Council briefing notes that “Lumumba wants aid from any and all quarters; he is therefore not anxious to burn his bridges to [the] West.” The CIA was there to do that for him.

Another NSC briefing regarded Belgium’s attitude towards Katangan independence as ambiguous because secessionist Tshombé could be used as a proxy against Lumumba. “Brussels [is] anxious to protect its investments in Katanga and probably views Lumumba as a budding Castro.”

CIA Director Dulles and Chief of the Africa Division (clandestine services), Bronson Tweedy (1914-2004), believed that Lumumba’s existence would lead to “disastrous consequences for the prestige of the UN and for the interests of the free world generally.” Dulles gave his officers permission to act without the consent of Ambassadors: “Time does not permit referral here.” (Cable likely drafted by Tweedy, signed by Dulles).

KILLING LUMUMBA: “I ORGANISED IT”

Aside from the spectacular and unrealized plots to poison Lumumba with toxins invented by the CIA’s poisoner-in-chief Sidney Gottlieb (a.k.a., Joseph Scheider, 1918-99), practical CIA operations saw covert support for anti-Lumumba politicians and militia. In late-1960, CIA Deputy Director for Plans, Richard Bissell (1909-94), co-authored a cable with Tweedy outlining plans to “provide clandestine support to elements in armed opposition to Lumumba.” Tweedy writes: “The concern with Lumumba was not really the concern with Lumumba as a person,” but with his “effect on the balance of the Continent of a disintegration of the Congo.”

In July 1960 and in contrast to other, then-classified reports, CIA Director Dulles told the National Security Council: “It is safe to go on the assumption that Lumumba has been bought by the Communists; this also, however, fits with his own orientation.” President Kasavubu wanted no part in Bissell’s plot to kill Lumumba. CIA representative Thomas Parrott (1914-2007) outlined plans to get labor unions to push for a vote of no confidence in Lumumba at the Senate. CIA Station Chief Devlin sent a cable on August 18^th 1960: “Difficult [to] determine major influencing factors to predict outcome. [S]truggle for power[. D]ecisive period not far off.”

Future MI5 Director and then-British Foreign Office civil servant, Sir Howard Smith (1919-96), came up with numerous scenarios for ousting Lumumba: “The first is the simple one of removing him from the scene by killing him.” So-called Queen of Spies, Daphne Park OBE (1921-2010), was an MI6 agent, Special Operations Executive Sergeant, future Somerville College (Oxford) Principal, and later Baroness of Monmouth. Between 1959 and 1961, Sgt. Park was MI6’s Consul and First Secretary in Léopoldville, where she developed close contacts with warring Congolese factions, including the secessionists in Katanga. When asked if MI6 had been involved in Lumumba’s murder, Sgt. Park admitted: “I organised it.”

In December 1960, Mobutu’s forces captured Lumumba en route to Stanleyville in the north. Mobutu handed Lumumba to the secessionist forces in Katanga. The 34-year-old Lumumba appears to have been murdered in mid-January 1961. To prevent the location of death becoming a pilgrimage site, his body was dissolved in acid.

Chief Historian of the CIA, David Robarge, says: “Agency [covert action] concentrated on stabilizing and supporting the [post-Lumumba] government of President Joseph Kasavubu and Prime Ministers Cyrille Adoula and Moise Tshombe, with Mobutu as behind-the-scenes power broker.” The CIA paid Mobutu’s soldiers to be loyal. (At the end of Mobutu’s long reign, the Army’s faux loyalty rapidly disintegrated.) Details are not known, but at the time, the CIA also paid politicians to engage in “Parliamentary maneuvering” to support the central regime.

KILLING HAMMARSKJÖLD

Mobutu soon dispensed with the façade of democracy. He seized power, filled the regime’s Équateurian elite with ethnic Ngbandi people, and ruled with an iron fist. For instance, André Lubaya (1932-68) was President of Kasaï Province, Economic Minister (1965-68), and founder of the Union Démocratique Africaine. Mobutu accused Lubaya of being part of a coup plot and reportedly had him executed. Between 1963 and ’65, Mobutu crushed the pro-Lumumba Simba (“Lion”) Rebellion in the north. Mobutu placed President Kasavubu (1960-65) under house arrest until Kasavubu’s death in 1969. A CIA report from late-1961 dismisses claims that the quasi-civil war was “part of a Communist master plan” as “not supported by other evidence.”

The CIA also noted that the killing of U.N. Ghanaian troops by Congo Army soldiers showed the weakness of the 20,000 U.N. peacekeepers in the country. The CIA appeared to agree with the Belgian foreign ministry, that NATO could play a role. U.N. Secretary-General Hammarskjöld “indicated dissatisfaction at pace of Belgian withdrawal from Katanga.” At the close of ‘61, former FBI Agent and ex-corporate lobbyist in Guatemala, Democrat Thomas J. Dodd (1907-71), wrote against Hammarskjöld’s peace efforts at the U.N., falsely arguing that the warring factions in the government were close to sorting out their own affairs. Dodd publicly claimed that the Soviets favored U.N. involvement in Congo to destabilize the country.

Against this propaganda backdrop, CIA Air Operations began in 1962 as a tactic to raise Mobutu’s profile. They soon extended to tactical support to U.N. peacekeepers and foreign mercenaries. Historian Robarge says that the Congolese Air Forces “existed only because of US assistance.” Six agents oversaw 125 contractors, including 79 foreign pilots.

The American, Belgian, British, and South African intelligence agencies plotted Operation Celeste: Hammarskjöld’s murder. South African intelligence used a mercenary company called the SA Institute for Maritime Research (SAIMAR). Prior to the murder, Britain’s MI5 and Special Operations Executive (for which Sgt. Park worked) met with SAIMAR.

Documents, which various authorities have tried to dismiss as forgeries, state: “[United Nations Organization] is becoming troublesome and it is felt that Hammarskjöld should be removed.” CIA Director Dulles “agrees and has promised full cooperation from his people.” Referring to Hammarskjöld and Lumumba, respectively, the author writes: “I want his removal to be handled more efficiently than was Patrice.” SAIMAR arranged to blow up Hammarskjöld’s DC-6 plane with 6lbs of TNT. The bomb failed and a contingency plan involved Hammarskjöld’s plane being shot down by a British-Belgian former Royal Air Force pilot, Jan van Risseghem, known as the Lone Ranger.

At the time, Rhodesia was part of the waning British Empire. U.S. Naval Officer, Charles Southall, heard intercepted transmissions in which Risseghem said of Hammarskjöld’s plane attempting to land in Rhodesia: “I’m going to go down to make a run on it. Yes, it’s the Transair DC­6. It’s the plane. I’ve hit it. There are flames. It’s going down. It’s crashing.” Now-declassified cables by U.S. Ambassador, Edward Gullion (1913-98), confirmed Risseghem’s presence at the crash site. Former President Harry Truman (1884-1972) later told reporters: “[Hammarskjöld] was on the point of getting something done when they killed him. Notice that I said ‘when they killed him’.”

Given that Hammarskjöld’s body was photographed with the Ace of Spades death card in his collar, “they” presumably means the CIA.

REIGN OF TERROR

With Lumumba and Hammarskjöld out of the way, the CIA beefed up Mobutu’s Army. Katangan secessionists fell in 1963 and most gendarmes fled to Angola, forming the Lunda people-majority’s Congolese National Liberation Front (Front de libération nationale congolaise, FLNC): a group described by the CIA as the only feasible threat to Mobutu.

Between 1963 and ‘64, revolts and insurrections occurred in Kasais, Kivu, and Kwilu. Led by Pierre Mulele (1929-68), the ethnic Mumbunda, politically Marxist rebels in Kwilu failed to mobilize the locals. Mulele was tortured to death by Mobutu’s forces. Via Station Chief Devlin, the CIA hired British mercenaries, including Col. “Mad Mike” Hoare, to train Mobutu’s forces and crush the rebellions. Mobutu sentenced secessionist Tshombé to death in absentia. Tshombé settled in Franco’s Spain but was captured by the French agent, Francis Bodenan, who took him to French Algeria, where he later died, supposedly of heart failure.

CIA-backed Congolese Air Force sorties against Cuban and Chinese-trained guerrillas began in February 1964 and continued into ‘66. Operations included assisting Mobutu’s “crackdown” against mutineers in Katanga. With its “pocket navy,” the CIA assisted Mobutu’s counter-rebel maritime operations on Lake Tanganyika on the eastern border, as well as on Lake Albert in the northeast.

The CIA estimated in mid-1966: “The Cuban presence in Africa is not large.” Even in Congo-Brazzaville, the largest contingent was “a relatively small contribution of Cuban training, materiel, or manpower.” Yet they feared that even this “would somewhat increase [the] potential” of rebel groups. In the same year Mobutu banned the communist-oriented General Confederation of Congolese Workers (Confédération Générale du Travail du Congo). A year later, Mobutu created a single labor union to support his MPR government. The union was the National Union of Workers of Congo/Zaire (Union Nationale des Travailleurs du Zaire). Strikes were outlawed and the labor code non-binding. Mobutu retained control over union-industry relations.

The U.S. tolerated Mobutu’s nationalization programs because the IMF had, in 1967, imposed financial reforms, and the worst effects of nationalization from U.S. corporations’ perspective was the exodus of Belgian specialists, who could anyway be replaced with U.S. experts. The Équateur region “apparently has no mineral wealth,” thus the CIA permitted nationalization in the early-‘70s.

Between 1957 and 1972, the number of doctors declined from one in 20,000—already one of the lowest on the Continent—to one in 30,000: one in 50,000 in many rural regions.

Katangans refused to support an invasion of Angola-based mercenaries. The CIA reckoned that the Simba insurgency was “little more than banditry.” By 1970, the CIA was quite impressed with Mobutu. “[He] has given his country better internal security and political stability … He has gone far toward remaking an unruly army into a fairly effective counterinsurgency force, and the once-formidable rebel bands have been whittled down to small groups of fugitives.” It added that Mobutu’s politics “will not give voters a real choice of candidates.” In 1971, Mobutu changed the name of the country to Zaire and, within a year, Katanga was renamed Shaba (“copper”).

By early-1973, the CIA was confident that Shaba with its all-important minerals was under the “unchallenged authority” of Mobutu.

An undated CIA memo notes that, “without Shaba’s wealth Zaire would not be a viable entity.” Formed from the remnants of the Katangan gendarmerie, the Angola-based FLNC periodically attempted to take Shaba (Katanga). In March 1977, the FLNC took over the major towns, but received no support from the general public in Katanga. The U.S., France, and Belgium sent troops to the region.

Another invasion in 1978 failed when the U.S. aided 1,200 Belgian airborne rescue personnel as French Legionnaires fought the rebels. A government official was killed and the attack blamed on ethnic Mumbunda. In the southern town Idiofa, 350 Mumbunda were murdered in revenge and 12 Kimbanguist Christians hanged. At the end of the decade in the diamond-rich region of Kasaï, the Defense Intelligence Agency says: “soldiers massacred hundreds of students and miners in the region.” In 1980, 60 people in Bas-Zaire (now Kongo Central in the west) were arrested for forming an opposition party. In the same year, Mobutu arrested and exiled former Parliamentarians who were trying to form a new authority in Katanga.

U.S. diplomat and future executive director of the World Bank, Bob Keating (1924-2012), wrote to CIA Director, Admiral Stansfield Turner (1923-2018), about Zaire, in which Keating was heading the Mobutu-initiated Committee for Industrial Development. “[I]t is the policy of the United States to help stabilize the political and economic situation.” Keating writes: “Large sums of money will be spent for this purpose over the next three years through emergency programs of foreign aid and investment.”

A March 1979 assessment notes that “The Zairian Army (FAZ) is more a menace to the country’s civilian population than a threat to any outside force.” It describes Zaire as “a military regime with a civilian façade,” as well as Mobutu’s loosening grip on power and the absence of suitable successors. Drought in Bas-Zaire caused serious food shortages. Internal opposition was “non-existent” and European-based opponents “divided and weak.” The CIA feared “spontaneous uprisings” in Kinshasa and Shaba (Katanga). “Without continued external economic and military support, the President’s rule would deteriorate even more rapidly … There are no readily identifiable potential successors.”

Military assistance continued to pour into Zaire.

INTO THE ‘80s: FATALISM

The CIA notes that by the 1980s, Zaire was a hub for international military training. Belgian forces mainly concentrated on training commandos in Kinshasa, Kota Koli, and Shaba. Chinese advisers provided small arms and training. Egyptian personnel trained and armed the military. French paratroopers equipped armored units, including the Air Force. Israelis aided the Special Presidential Brigades. West Germany exported communications equipment and soldiers.

The U.S. spent millions of dollars “to finance most of the country’s inventory of military vehicles, nearly all of its airlift capability …, some naval craft, and much of the … communications equipment.” This was conducted under the International Military Education Training Program.

A June 1980 CIA report notes that: “US strategic interests in Zaire, along with those of most other industrial powers outside the Communist world, are influenced by their almost total reliance on imported cobalt and by Zaire’s prominent role in supply of this critical metal.”

Shaba alone accounted for 60 percent of Zaire’s foreign exchange earnings. In 1982, the Directorate of Intelligence reported “conditions that appear worse than at any time since the turbulent years just after the country became independent”: debt servicing burdens, stagflation, and unemployment. Even if an anti-Mobutu coup had taken place, “Zaire probably would remain Western oriented and would continue to depend on the West or assistance and markets for its mineral exports.”

In the early-80s, Mobutu imposed austerity in response to currency devaluation and trade imbalances. “There may be future protest by mineworkers, students, and civil servants, but Mobutu remains firmly in control.” The CIA notes that “the majority of the population has apparently adopted a fatalistic attitude towards hard times.” But fatalism was not to last. By the mid-‘80s, the CIA was reporting that “Cutbacks in education have provoked strikes at a number of universities … leading Mobutu to close several campuses and arrest some students and teachers.” These conditions “could set the stage for open unrest among various domestic interest groups.” A redacted section notes Mobutu’s opposition to “US plans to sell cobalt from [Zaire’s] strategic stockpile, claiming this would drive the world price down.”

CONCLUSION: THE CONGO WARS

The CIA’s publicly-available Congo record dries up in the 1980s. By the early-‘90s, internal and external tensions, including a politically active public and conflicts on the border, pushed Mobutu’s regime to the brink. The dictator was abroad for health treatment when an old Katanga rival, Laurent Kabila (1939-2001), triggered the first of the Congo Wars (1996-97 and ’98-2003) and deposed Mobutu. The nation went from the agonies of dictatorship to the trauma of genocidal war. Western corporations and consumers continue to benefit from cheap coltan. The CIA’s mission was complete.

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Although the Blinken-Biden foreign policy approach may be more palatable to European governments and much of the US population, that doesn’t mean it’s that different from what preceded it. Besides the possible reinstatement of the Iran nuclear deal and a re-engagement with Cuba, little seems likely to change. US residents will continue to be told that China is a potentially dangerous enemy and that Russia wants to rule the world. This is despite the fairly obvious evidence to the contrary. While both nations seem to want to expand their economic influence—a natural result of the capitalist nature of their economies—the actions of neither nation indicate a desire to create an empire of military bases and operations like that currently run by the United States. Although Washington would like the world to believe China’s ship movements near its borders are aggressive in nature, a more honest perspective defines those actions as primarily defensive. In a similar fashion, the Russian actions in eastern Ukraine, Georgia and Crimea could be considered as such. No matter how one perceives these actions, however, they pale behind the US military reach around the globe in oceans and countries far from its borders. The presence of two carrier groups in the Mideast, at least two in the Pacific and a couple others in waters far from any US shores is much different from the defensive positions held by Chinese and Russian ships. In addition, the continued presence of US troops and special forces in nations around the world, including many that directly border Russia, China and smaller adversaries like Iran and Venezuela can only be considered defensive in nature if one accepts Washington’s belief that the world is Washington’s to own.

As an indication of his worldview, it is revealing to note Blinken’s membership in the Center for Strategic and International Studies(CSIS). According to its website, the CSIS “has been dedicated to finding ways to sustain American prominence and prosperity as a force for good in the world.” One is not being particularly cynical when they point out that the good this statement is referring to is the good of Wall Street, and not necessarily Main Street. The CSIS bills itself as a nonpartisan entity. It is funded in large part by war industry contractors, energy corporations and US based banks with an expressed purpose of “maintaining US prominence” in the world. Given the nature of its board of trustees, it’s clear that what that nonpartisansship means is it represents the power elites that run the United States. Democrats and Republicans share a common goal of ensuring the US remains the world’s most powerful state. The differences of opinion the parties have on certain issues do not exist when it comes to enveloping the world in the web of US imperialism. There are differences in how to go about this, but not on the goal itself. This is why both parties are up in arms about China’s rising star and Russian challenges in the Mideast and Europe. The non-partisan nature of the Board lies in the inclusion of both US capitalist parties, not in the inclusion of anti-capitalist or anti-imperialist viewpoints.

Image by Lencer, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Biden, Blinken and DOD

As mentioned at the beginning of this piece, Biden’s foreign policy is fundamentally the same as that of the past several decades. The differences we are likely to see will be mostly cosmetic. Yes, moves like re-instituting the Iran agreement and re-establishing ties with Cuba are important and a step away from unnecessary aggressiveness. However, these actions, if undertaken, have an underlying goal of creating broader support for the ongoing hegemonic endeavor that defines US foreign policy. If there are any defining differences in foreign policy approaches over the last five presidential administrations one such difference would be this: should the US create coalitions of nations when it attacks another country or should it go it alone? One could reasonably argue that the military actions taken under cover of a coalition of the “willing” tend to be more successful, while primarily solo adventures have tended to backfire. This isn’t to say that any US-inspired military action of the last thirty years has achieved the goals originally presented by the White House, but those where the US acted unilaterally seem to have been much more disastrous than those where a coalition of allies and client states was involved.

It is not my purpose here to predict the future of US foreign policy in the Biden White House. However, there are some potentially predictive statements and actions that have come from that direction since Inauguration Day. One such statement that sticks in my mind is Secretary of State Blinken’s repeated reference to something he calls a “rules-based order.” So, what is this rules-based order Mr. Blinken is always going on about and who makes the rules? Near as I can tell, it’s Washington who makes the rules he’s talking about and it’s Wall Street that informs them. The apparent purpose of this rules-based order is to institute capitalist “democracy” throughout the world, even though the current situation seems to show that capitalism and democracy are not synonymous nor is democracy necessarily the preferred form of government among many capitalist entities.

In a March 24, 2021 speech Blinken accused China of economically coercing Australia. To state the obvious, this statement was certainly not self-reflective. After all, Washington has written the book about economic coercion for at least the past sixty years. Indeed, it is currently sanctioning several nations because they are resisting its attempts to dominate the world. Sanctions are the definition of economic coercion. Indeed, pointing fingers at China’s coercive behavior only highlights Washington’s decades of such behavior.

While it is somewhat reasonable to assume that the Biden White House will try and avoid instigating a military conflict with China, Russia, Iran or Venezuela, there is little indication it will withdraw all forces from the Middle East or South Asia or that Special Forces operations around the globe will cease or even be cut back. If present budget proposals remain close to what they are, Biden’s first Pentagon budget will check in at around 1.7 percent more than Trump’s last budget. After all, history tells us that when economic and political coercion fails, war and threats of war often follow. Therefore, the war department’s budget must never decrease.

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