Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace
Keith Hazelton
April 28, 2007
It's likely that America's military spending has surpassed $12 Trillion since the end of World War II. Add another $4 Trillion for interest on the national debt that has resulted from that military spending.
In 2006 (fiscal year), the total cost of America's military spending exceeded $885 Billion, which includes veterans' benefits and retirement and interest on the potion of national debt, but not including the roughly $40 Billion for Homeland Security. It also does not include our off-balance-sheet forays into Iraq and Afghanistan which likely adds another $500 Billion in the last five years.
This staggering sum equates to about $9,000 per American household, this year alone. What's in your wallet? Would an additional $9,000 help? Make a dent in those prescription costs at Walgreen's? Get junior through another year in college?
Clearly in 2006, six decades after naming the U.S.S.R. public enemy number one, beginning the cold war and inaugurating the national security state, as Gore Vidal describes it, Americans have been scared into believing these expenditures are necessary for our survival – perpetual war (and preparation for war) for perpetual peace.
As you remember, “War is Peace” is one of three paradoxical slogans which George Orwell's 1984 inhabitants of totalitarian Oceania accept as truth, an example of “newspeak.” Continual warfare in that imaginary land is the method by which the Party – Oceania's ruling class - disposes of excess resources or diverts the product of human labor away from that which would otherwise increase or enhance the standard of living (which in turn could dilute Party power over its subjects).
In Orwell's Oceania, war ceases to exist for the masses of people, its continuity guaranteeing the permanence and perpetuity of the present order, hence “war is peace.” By creating artificial fear and hate of an enemy, “the Party” provided an excuse for its social failures – shortages of food, consumer products, housing - because, as perpetual war became the economic underpinning of the nation, its subjects were kept busy producing goods that would not improve their standard of living, but instead would be destroyed on the battlefields, necessitating continuous replacement.
Thus perpetual war not only kept the population employed and busy, albeit barely above subsistence level, it also encouraged a “siege mentality” in which hatred of the enemy and love for the government's protection were social norms.
Eminent historian Charles A. Beard (1874-1948) described in 1947 this state of “perpetual war for perpetual peace,” coining a phrase which became a prescient prediction of United States' foreign policy from the close of World War II.
Sixty years ago, as America embarked upon an unprecedented peacetime military buildup, later described as the military-industrial complex in Eisenhower's warning upon leaving office, we had the Evil Empire, Joe Stalin's and Nikita Kruschev's U.S.S.R. as our ever-ready foil, which represented an eternal threat upon which to base our huge defense expenditures.
Like Superman, or any superhero, it seems the United States must have at least one nemesis, an archenemy, and several lesser enemies, to define the essence of our existence. In all real and imagined examples of Good versus Evil, the more evil the enemy the more good the hero appears (imagine Superman without his Lex Luther).
A superpower's greatest risk – greatest “failure” – is to become irrelevant, unnecessary, in the greater scheme of world affairs, other than as buyers of inexpensive consumer goods, as easily could happen - in the view of the neocons - to the United States in the absence of a credible threat by a credible enemy.
It almost did happen to the United States in 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell and the former Soviet Union began its so indecorous withdrawal from the eternal cosmic battle.
For the first time since 1946, the national security state found itself without an archenemy. All that military-industrial complex going to waste with no one save our old friend Manuel Noriega to pick on in Panama.
Godless liberal doves immediately began yammering about "Peace Dividends" resulting from an abundance of tax dollars no longer necessary to defeat the Evil Empire.
In that rare instance, the god-fearing conservative hawks who own and run this country had only one option: in the absence of evil, they had to create it.
As luck would have it for the god-fearing, conservative, hawkish neocons, in early August 1990 Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, roiling world oil markets and sending crude prices soaring again to the $40-barrel level not seen in more than a decade. Here was a new enemy, at least one that possibly jeopardized truth, justice and the American way and our undeniable economic freedom to drive and shop at will.
But here's the rub. Saddam thought he had a green light - permission - to “liberate” Kuwait after our Iraqi ambassador, speaking for Secretary of State James K. Baker III, told Hussein, our “friend” in the 1980s when he was fighting Iran and the despised Ayatolla, the United States had no interest in its border dispute with Kuwait.
Gotcha! Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm became Gulf War I as a no-doubt confused Saddam Hussein saw his forces routed in a matter of weeks. But the deed was done, and, as we had to be continually wary of that wily Saddam, it was no time to diminish military spending. So much for the Peace Dividend.
It never materialized despite President Clinton's best efforts as American defense spending continued apace without the Russians and Americans returned to the freeways and shopping malls during that golden decade.
So today we have an undeclared war on terrorism, now coming upon five years of increased military spending and no closer to capturing the supposed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Yes, Osama bin Laden still roams the badlands of Afghanistan or Pakistan, while our attention has been diverted, first to an impotent Saddam Hussein, and next, as one already can hear the sabres rattling, to Iran.
But the War on Terrorism is only an undercard, as Iraq, possibly Iran and -why not? - North Korea - that wacky “Axis of Evil,” provide America something to practice upon while we await our next great adversary, much the same way that Terra-Man, Metallo and the Toyman merely were minor annoyances to the Man of Steel, while he awaited some new, Lex-Luther-like arch-enemy to reveal itself.
And our next great superpower adversary? China, of course. Some already are willing to confer archenemy status upon China, with a standing army of at least 3 million troops, its first-strike nuclear capability and its growing economy, oil consumption and middle class. America will spot China a decade, two at the most, however, so the Peoples Republic may acquire significantly more of our national debt than it owns today, to raise the stakes, so to speak.
Only then will we truly have in China a worthy archenemy, our new and long-term “most-favored-nemesis.”
You think I'm kidding? Here's Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under President Clinton, in January 2006 on National Public Radio's Marketplace:
"As China grows - at the current rate it's growing, in twenty or thirty years - and becomes the number one largest economy in the world, I think China may become our nemesis."
Mr. Reich believes it could be a generation before China reaches most favored adversary status, but at the rate America is importing big box store merchandise (and soon automobiles) and at the rate China is buying our Treasury debt with all those dollars it gets stuck with in return and increasing its annual oil consumption, perhaps even 20 years may be a stretch.
Stay tuned. Perpetual war for perpetual peace. How did George Orwell know?
In 2006 (fiscal year), the total cost of America's military spending exceeded $885 Billion, which includes veterans' benefits and retirement and interest on the potion of national debt, but not including the roughly $40 Billion for Homeland Security. It also does not include our off-balance-sheet forays into Iraq and Afghanistan which likely adds another $500 Billion in the last five years.
This staggering sum equates to about $9,000 per American household, this year alone. What's in your wallet? Would an additional $9,000 help? Make a dent in those prescription costs at Walgreen's? Get junior through another year in college?
Clearly in 2006, six decades after naming the U.S.S.R. public enemy number one, beginning the cold war and inaugurating the national security state, as Gore Vidal describes it, Americans have been scared into believing these expenditures are necessary for our survival – perpetual war (and preparation for war) for perpetual peace.
As you remember, “War is Peace” is one of three paradoxical slogans which George Orwell's 1984 inhabitants of totalitarian Oceania accept as truth, an example of “newspeak.” Continual warfare in that imaginary land is the method by which the Party – Oceania's ruling class - disposes of excess resources or diverts the product of human labor away from that which would otherwise increase or enhance the standard of living (which in turn could dilute Party power over its subjects).
In Orwell's Oceania, war ceases to exist for the masses of people, its continuity guaranteeing the permanence and perpetuity of the present order, hence “war is peace.” By creating artificial fear and hate of an enemy, “the Party” provided an excuse for its social failures – shortages of food, consumer products, housing - because, as perpetual war became the economic underpinning of the nation, its subjects were kept busy producing goods that would not improve their standard of living, but instead would be destroyed on the battlefields, necessitating continuous replacement.
Thus perpetual war not only kept the population employed and busy, albeit barely above subsistence level, it also encouraged a “siege mentality” in which hatred of the enemy and love for the government's protection were social norms.
Eminent historian Charles A. Beard (1874-1948) described in 1947 this state of “perpetual war for perpetual peace,” coining a phrase which became a prescient prediction of United States' foreign policy from the close of World War II.
Sixty years ago, as America embarked upon an unprecedented peacetime military buildup, later described as the military-industrial complex in Eisenhower's warning upon leaving office, we had the Evil Empire, Joe Stalin's and Nikita Kruschev's U.S.S.R. as our ever-ready foil, which represented an eternal threat upon which to base our huge defense expenditures.
Like Superman, or any superhero, it seems the United States must have at least one nemesis, an archenemy, and several lesser enemies, to define the essence of our existence. In all real and imagined examples of Good versus Evil, the more evil the enemy the more good the hero appears (imagine Superman without his Lex Luther).
A superpower's greatest risk – greatest “failure” – is to become irrelevant, unnecessary, in the greater scheme of world affairs, other than as buyers of inexpensive consumer goods, as easily could happen - in the view of the neocons - to the United States in the absence of a credible threat by a credible enemy.
It almost did happen to the United States in 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell and the former Soviet Union began its so indecorous withdrawal from the eternal cosmic battle.
For the first time since 1946, the national security state found itself without an archenemy. All that military-industrial complex going to waste with no one save our old friend Manuel Noriega to pick on in Panama.
Godless liberal doves immediately began yammering about "Peace Dividends" resulting from an abundance of tax dollars no longer necessary to defeat the Evil Empire.
In that rare instance, the god-fearing conservative hawks who own and run this country had only one option: in the absence of evil, they had to create it.
As luck would have it for the god-fearing, conservative, hawkish neocons, in early August 1990 Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, roiling world oil markets and sending crude prices soaring again to the $40-barrel level not seen in more than a decade. Here was a new enemy, at least one that possibly jeopardized truth, justice and the American way and our undeniable economic freedom to drive and shop at will.
But here's the rub. Saddam thought he had a green light - permission - to “liberate” Kuwait after our Iraqi ambassador, speaking for Secretary of State James K. Baker III, told Hussein, our “friend” in the 1980s when he was fighting Iran and the despised Ayatolla, the United States had no interest in its border dispute with Kuwait.
Gotcha! Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm became Gulf War I as a no-doubt confused Saddam Hussein saw his forces routed in a matter of weeks. But the deed was done, and, as we had to be continually wary of that wily Saddam, it was no time to diminish military spending. So much for the Peace Dividend.
It never materialized despite President Clinton's best efforts as American defense spending continued apace without the Russians and Americans returned to the freeways and shopping malls during that golden decade.
So today we have an undeclared war on terrorism, now coming upon five years of increased military spending and no closer to capturing the supposed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Yes, Osama bin Laden still roams the badlands of Afghanistan or Pakistan, while our attention has been diverted, first to an impotent Saddam Hussein, and next, as one already can hear the sabres rattling, to Iran.
But the War on Terrorism is only an undercard, as Iraq, possibly Iran and -why not? - North Korea - that wacky “Axis of Evil,” provide America something to practice upon while we await our next great adversary, much the same way that Terra-Man, Metallo and the Toyman merely were minor annoyances to the Man of Steel, while he awaited some new, Lex-Luther-like arch-enemy to reveal itself.
And our next great superpower adversary? China, of course. Some already are willing to confer archenemy status upon China, with a standing army of at least 3 million troops, its first-strike nuclear capability and its growing economy, oil consumption and middle class. America will spot China a decade, two at the most, however, so the Peoples Republic may acquire significantly more of our national debt than it owns today, to raise the stakes, so to speak.
Only then will we truly have in China a worthy archenemy, our new and long-term “most-favored-nemesis.”
You think I'm kidding? Here's Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under President Clinton, in January 2006 on National Public Radio's Marketplace:
"As China grows - at the current rate it's growing, in twenty or thirty years - and becomes the number one largest economy in the world, I think China may become our nemesis."
Mr. Reich believes it could be a generation before China reaches most favored adversary status, but at the rate America is importing big box store merchandise (and soon automobiles) and at the rate China is buying our Treasury debt with all those dollars it gets stuck with in return and increasing its annual oil consumption, perhaps even 20 years may be a stretch.
Stay tuned. Perpetual war for perpetual peace. How did George Orwell know?
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