More critical thoughts on America’s proxy war [American politics #7]

Ted Grimsrud—October 5, 2023

[Early in 2022, after Russia greatly accelerated its military engagement with Ukraine, I wrote  several blog posts and then some shorter posts on Facebook  with my reflections. After many months, I decided to re-engage these issues as the war continues unabated. I posted several times recently on Facebook and consolidated those into a blog post, “And they call it democracy…. Critical thoughts on America’s proxy war.” Here are a couple more posts.]

History may not repeat itself but at times it sure rhymes (9.22.23)

I recently read a book from the late 1970s, The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman. It is a detailed report on the carnage visited on various countries around the world (e.g., Indonesia, Thailand, the Dominican Republic, and—especially—Vietnam) by the American Empire in the 1960s and 1970s. The section on Vietnam especially caught my attention as I thought of America’s involvement in the current Russia/Ukraine war.

On the surface, the differences between the Vietnam War back then and the current war in Ukraine are obvious and significant. Back then, it was the US invading Vietnam with hundreds of thousands of our troops; now, we are mainly only offering military aid (no troops) to Ukraine as it is invaded by Russia.

However, I find it instructive to think of a few of the similarities. With the Vietnam War, the US military planners well knew by 1965 that it was a war they could not win. From that point on until the final withdrawal ten years later, the US pursued extraordinarily destructive military operations for purposes entirely separate from actually defeating their Vietnamese enemies. It was clear during that entire time that eventually the war would end with a US defeat. So, why did they continue? It had to do with broader American “strategic interests” in the world and with American “prestige.”

Is the same kind of dynamic present in our current conflict? The much-heralded Ukrainian “counteroffensive” seems not only to have failed; it seems quite likely that the US/NATO leaders who pushed for that effort knew it would fail from the beginning. Why would they do this? It is hard to imagine an alternative to the reality that it’s about “strategic interests” and “prestige” that have absolutely nothing to do with the wellbeing of the Ukrainian people.

In a cutting commentary titled “U.S. Can’t Deal with Defeat,” Michael Brenner, a professor of international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, points to a parallel between Vietnam and the present in the way the U.S. practices denial in face of defeat (see link in the Comments below). This dynamic of denial led to the decade-long extension of an unwinnable war in Vietnam with unmeasurable cost to the people of Vietnam—and seems to be leading to the continuation of the present war with its horrendous costs to the people of Ukraine.

Brenner, though, does point to one difference between these two wars. “The US was fortunate, in the case of Vietnam, that the United States’ dominant position in the world outside of the Soviet Union and China allowed it to maintain respect, status, and influence. Things have changed, though. The US relative strength in all domains is weaker, strong centrifugal forces around the globe are producing a dispersion of power, will, and outlook among other states. The BRICS phenomenon is the concrete embodiment of that reality.”

This kind of imperial overreach is coming at the worst time imaginable for the United States. The double crises of the climate catastrophe and the presence of the Trumpian Right require the country’s best energies. Instead, we get this disaster in Ukraine. President Biden obviously is getting little if any popularity bump from his support for this war and it is hard to imagine, if the Ukrainian War continues on its current path, he won’t suffer politically. This would be welcome except the only alternative to the warist Democrats right now are the anti-democratic forces that Trump represents.

Instead of democracy’s best efforts, what we get instead is a morally bankrupt, militarily inept, and politically self-destructive commitment to an unnecessary war that we can’t win in our quest to take down Russian and Chinese “enemies” who actually are not our enemies. The complete unity of the Democratic Party and the mainstream media in supporting this madness is not a sign that those of us who oppose the war should rethink our views. Rather, it is a grim reminder of the profound self-destruction of the American Empire as it reaps the consequences of its long process of seeking dominance rather than a genuinely peaceable world.

There’s money to be made in losing wars (10.5.23)

It appears that what we are seeing in the Ukraine War right now is something new in the American way of war. A recent New York Times article, misleadingly entitled, “Who’s gaining ground in Ukraine? This year, no one,” actually documents how the much-hyped Ukrainian counteroffensive has *lost* territory. A better headline would have been, “The Ukrainian counteroffensive is actually losing ground.”

However, American leaders are undaunted in their support for pouring more and more weapons into this doomed war—regardless of the cost to the Ukrainian people whose country is being destroyed in order to save it and regardless of the cost to the American taxpayers. If both political parties support such policies and if the mainstream media mainly simply echoes what the policymakers say, then how can such craziness be stopped?

There are people who are clearly benefiting from this disastrous war—the arms profiteers and their bought political operatives. The political support is bipartisan. As reported by the Sri Lankan blogger, Indi, Republican Mitch McConnell sings praises to the war: “We haven’t lost a single American in this war. Most of the money we spend related to Ukraine is actually spent in the US, replenishing weapons, more modern weapons. So, it’s actually employing people here and improving our own military for what may lie ahead.”

From the other side of the aisle, Democrat Senator Richard Blumenthal echoes the praise: “Even Americans who have no particular interest in freedom and independence in democracies worldwide should be satisfied that we’re getting our money’s worth on our Ukraine investment.”

What is new in this current situation is the willingness of leaders to be so straightforward. We are fueling this conflict that is only making life worse with no hope of success at great expense during a time when so many needs in our country are going unmet because it is making money for our weapons makers. What a great investment! Such honesty has rarely been expressed in America’s past military interventions.

This is Indi’s summary: “This is the great innovation of American Empire. They have figured out that there’s more money in *losing* wars. American oligarchs have figured out how to loot their own treasury, make the world less secure, and make a killing doing it. America has run this con in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc., and faced no consequences. The same politicians keep getting elected, the same arms dealers cycle in and out of government office, the same columnists keep inciting the violence. As much as they fail, they can only fall upwards.”

Of course, these war failures are not losses for the folks who actually matter in the decision-making: the corporate merchants of death. The only possible way to imagine the US military acting sincerely on behalf of democracy and freedom (as is claimed) would be if we somehow had a non-profit war system.

It is becoming more and more clear that the US/NATO motivations for intensifying the war in Ukraine never had anything to do with the wellbeing of the Ukrainian people. The unanimity of the American political establishment in favor of more war should be seen as an extraordinary act of self-condemnation that exposes it as corrupt to the core. How can the American people possibly take these leaders seriously?

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