Category: American politics

Where is American Warism Headed?

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 4 Comments

Ted Grimsrud—October 22, 2024

We live in a time of great uncertainty. I find it difficult not to be quite discouraged about the direction the world seems to be going. What kind of future do we have? The presidential election in the United States that we are in the middle of (I mailed in my ballot the other day) is considered by many to be one of the most important we have ever faced.

No matter the outcome, warism will win the election

One of the outcomes of this election, though, that does seem fairly certain is that the American military and American militarism in general will remain engaged and expansive regardless of who is elected. We all know that Trump is all for militarism even if his (empty) rhetoric at times may seem to claim otherwise. Likewise, the Harris campaign has made it clear that she will be committed to continue on the warist path followed by the Biden administration in both Ukraine and Western Asia. So, with regard to what I believe is the most important issue facing our country—our involvement in global wars and preparations for war—this election will change nothing no matter how it turns out.

The two big wars we currently are fighting—in Ukraine and in Israel/Palestine—have not been going all that well for our side. In both cases, we see that American might seems to count for much less than what has been assumed. Simply the fact that both continue to be unresolved in itself tells us a great deal about the ineffectiveness of our weapons and leadership. Could it be that we are nearing the end of the post-World War II era of American military domination? Has the US quest for global dominance finally failed? If so, what will be the consequences?

Is American dominance coming to an end?

I recently read a challenging and surprising book that argues that indeed the end of an era is at hand. America’s Final War by Andrei Martynov (Clarity Press, 2024) argues that the US military is facing a failure in Ukraine that signals a profound shift in the balance of power and a certain descent into loss of power and influence by the American Empire. I thought that the failure to achieve quick victory in these two wars might indicate that American dominance is no longer what it once was. Martyanov goes further—the end is actually at hand. Is this possible?

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On voting for warmongers—or not [American Politics #11]

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 9 Comments

Ted Grimsrud—September 26, 2024

I still haven’t figured out what to do with my ballot for the 2024 presidential election. Our mail-in ballots arrived the other day and are sitting on our dining room table. There are some things I am certain about—I won’t simply throw the ballot away. I will vote (though not enthusiastically) for the Democratic Party candidates for the House and the Senate. I will not vote for Donald Trump.

However, I don’t know if I will vote for Kamala Harris. Unlike in the past, I will probably not vote for a third-party candidate. But I might leave that line blank. Or, a slight possibility, I might decide at the last minute to go ahead and vote for Cornel West (kind of for old times’ sake, I have greatly appreciated his speeches and writings over the years).

Almost exactly twelve years ago, I wrote a blog post: “Should a pacifist vote for a warmonger?” (plus, two follow-ups: “More thoughts about voting [or not] for a warmonger” and “Faith and politics [including voting]”). My answer, in relation to the re-election campaign of Barack Obama, was a carefully reasoned “yes.” That assertion elicited a truly enjoyable and lengthy conversation in the comments section of my post from a diversity of friends and other readers. Some agreed with me, and some did not. Those who disagreed were generally of a mind that not voting for president was a valid principled stance for Christian pacifists. Some who agreed with my decision to vote for Obama did not agree with my characterization of him as a “warmonger,” but were happy I was not sitting the election out.

What’s different compared to 2012?

Now, though, I am saying that I’m not yet persuaded to vote for Harris. What is different this time around? That is a challenging question for me. Before I looked at my 2012 post, I was not thinking about what I had decided back then. Now I realize that I am changing my argument. Why? Do I think I was wrong back then?

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The most important election? [American Politics #10]

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 27 Comments

Ted Grimsrud—September 16, 2024

I have always been interested in American politics and presidential elections. One of my oldest political memories is a dinner time conversation with my best friend’s family sixty years ago when we were lamenting that it looked like Barry Goldwater was going to win the Republican nomination over our more moderate favorites Nelson Rockefeller or William Scranton. I was ten years old. That was only the first of many disappointments for me about presidential politics.

Still, I feel like this current election is the worst in my lifetime. On the one hand, we have Donald Trump. Even with a long list of morally corrupt and warist predecessors, Trump seems to me to stand clearly as the worst person and worst leader ever to be president of this country. Yet, on the other hand we who cannot support Trump are given the major party alternative of a candidate who is up to her elbows in the administration of an overt and on-going genocide in Gaza and a US-initiated proxy war in Ukraine that is edging ever closer to a nuclear End Game.

The terrible irony for a peace-oriented citizen is that while we are being taught by the media that we live in a hyper-partisan age with extreme polarities between blue and red politics, on the issues that matter the most we face an implacable wall of bipartisan agreement. We don’t have the option of voting for peace. Both sides are all war, all the time. Probably the most disillusioning element of the consequences of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory over Trump has been the almost utter silencing of any kind of anti-war sentiment in the Democratic Party—certainly in relation to the proxy war in Ukraine and also largely in relation to the genocide in Gaza. The Democrats couldn’t even bring themselves to allow a short, innocuous, fully vetted speech from a pro-Palestinian speaker at their recent nominating convention.

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Is there an end in sight? The US Empire sinks ever lower [American Politics #9]

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 5 Comments

Ted Grimsrud—April 22 2024

“Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” (Dylan Thomas)

I have come to feel one little sliver of gratitude for the current devastating violence that Israel (with the backing of the United States) is visiting on Gaza. It helps us see more clearly the reality of the US/NATO backing of the doomed Ukrainian war against Russia and the reality of the scaling up of American war cries in relation to China. The US Congress’s recently passed spending bill to fund billions for war and war preparation in Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan makes obvious the actual dynamics.

The motives of the US Empire: Corporate profit and domination

I’d say first of all, the US/NATO pursues these wars and possible wars in order to redistribute money from their taxpayers to corporate war profiteers. And, then, second, these wars and possible wars are justified as necessary to further the empire’s obviously failing agenda of being the dominant power in a “unipolar” world. This agenda, of course, is framed in terms of resisting the expansionist intentions of Russia and China. However, when we look at the whole picture in light of the destruction of Gaza, we see more clearly that there is nothing defensive about any of these situations—Gaza is simply about conquest and devastation. To see that about Gaza in turn helps us see what, in reality, the others are about as well.

A recent, typically insightful essay by Aaron Maté helps make all of this clear. He points out, first, that this new bill is all about directing money to the war corporations. He quotes House Armed Service Chair Mike Rogers: “Nearly all the money we’re spending to arm Ukraine [and, I may add, Israel and Taiwan] doesn’t leave this country,” but instead “goes directly to US companies and American workers to produce more weapons at a faster pace.” As it turns out, a lot of the money in this particular bill won’t even go to Ukraine or Israel in any direct way but rather will be spent simply to rebuild the American store of weaponry.

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Twilight of the American Empire: A Time for Despair? [American politics #8]

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 21 Comments

Ted Grimsrud—March 12, 2024

The more I learn about the history of the United States, the more I question whether this country has ever had an actually functioning democracy. In the mid-19th century, abolitionist leaders Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison argued with each other about whether the problems with the then oppressive American slavery-embracing nation-state were due to roots found in the Constitution or more in spite of the Constitution. About 100 years later, a similar debate emerged between Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X. I find myself inching in the direction of Garrison and Malcolm and their views that the Constitution is a much bigger part of the problem than the solution.

Regardless of what we think about the original intentions of the Constitution, though, the facts seem to be that it has failed to prevent the emergence and growing reality of an American oligopoly characterized by the rule of a wealthy (and ruthless) elite at the expense of the wellbeing of the mass of the nation’s population—in defiance of the actual will of the people. I suspect that the US has always by and large been an oligopoly and that the myth of popular self-rule has always been mostly untrue. Nonetheless, things seem to be getting worse, and we currently face an extraordinary crisis with no hint of a creative way out of it.

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

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 4 Comments

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.

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A Christian pacifist in the American Empire, part 3: The American Empire without blinders

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 3 Comments

Ted Grimsrud—September 15, 2023

In the first post in this three-part Theological Memoir, “Embedded Theology,” I gave an account of my first two decades of life with a focus on how my “embedded theology” led me to accept the “blank check” regarding my loyalty to the American Empire, even to the point of being (reluctantly) willing to go to war if called. This acceptance of the blank check was, if anything, strengthened when I became a Christian and was taught that the “gospel” included an embrace of American patriotism.

The second post, “Jesus’s gospel of peace,” describes the circumstances around the transformation of my perspective due my encounter with Jesus—an embrace of Christian pacifism and a rejection of the blank check that involved a deeply critical disposition toward the American Empire. I also briefly sketch the Bible-oriented theology that undergirds that critical disposition.

My encounter with the gospel of peace has defined the rest of my life. Right away in 1976, I sought to bring together the two main elements of this new exciting vision for life and faith: First, an embrace of Jesus’s gracious and humane call that love of God and neighbor are the core meaning of life. Second, an ever-widening analysis in our social and political context of the vicious, expansionist, profoundly violent American Empire. From the very start, for me, these were two sides of a single coin. The call to love illuminated the realities of the Empire and the realities of the Empire continually challenged me to understand the practical and embodied character of the call to love. The more I studied the Bible, the more convinced I became of the radical nature of this story of God’s call of a people to bless all the families of the earth with their message of shalom. In this post I will outline my critique of the American Empire.

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And they call it democracy…. Critical thoughts on America’s proxy war

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 6 Comments

Ted Grimsrud—August 24, 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 all these months, I decided to re-engage these issues as the war continues unabated. Here are several recent Facebook posts.]

War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing! (August 3, 2023)

War almost always ends up way worse than those who initiate it expect. Classic examples are the American Civil War and World War I, in both cases famously entered into by all sides with the expectation the war would be quick and victorious. What followed were the two worst bloodbaths in human history up to the time with indecisive results. American history in the past 75 years is full of case after case of this dynamic (e.g., Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan).

Almost certainly, Russia expected its direct military intervention in the Ukrainian civil war to end quickly back a year and a half ago. There is a chance it might have had the negotiations of the Spring of 2022 managed to reach a conclusion. However, Ukraine pulled back, and the current devastating war of attrition accelerated with no happy ending in sight.

More controversially, some observers are suggesting that the US/NATO side of this conflict was also a miscalculation that is leading to profoundly negative unanticipated consequences for that side. One of these observers is the American political scientist John Mearsheimer, a professor at the University of Chicago. Mearsheimer is often categorized as a “realist” who, it could be said, believes in the American Empire but believes many of the past and current actions of the empire are ill-considered and self-defeating.

In a recent interview, he reemphasizes his perception that the Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russian forces in eastern Ukraine right now is essentially a hopeless operation and has been from the start. The West pushed Ukraine into this operation, but to Mearsheimer, it was “like encouraging them to launch a suicidal offensive that is completely counterproductive.” Why the push? “The West is very fearful that time is running out, that if the Ukrainians don’t show some significant success on the battlefield in the year 2023, public support for the war will dry up and the Ukrainians will lose—and the West will lose.”

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More thoughts about Ukraine and the American Empire [Pacifism Today #8]

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 15 Comments

Ted Grimsrud—June 23, 2022

[In early March, as the conflict in Ukraine gained the world’s attention, I began to write about that conflict, especially in relation to the American Empire. I posted a blog entry, “Thinking as an American pacifist about the Russian invasion” on March 3. On April 10, I posted “Reflecting morally on the conflict in Ukraine,” a collection of four shorter Facebook posts from the previous month. This current post also collects Facebook posts and leaves them essentially unchanged.]

So, what’s going on with Russia/Ukraine? [5.10.22]

I have struggled with how best to understand the current conflict in Ukraine and, especially, the American role in it—especially in light of Jesus and his biases toward peace and against the power elite. These are some brief points about which I have developed some clear impressions (subject to revision):

1. The US has been seeking a unipolar world at least since 1945 (for example, note the size of the American military budget in relation to the rest of the world and its extensive set of military bases around the world). This quest for global dominance has led to the US relationship with the Soviet Union/Russia to be very adversarial. Russia has a long history of facing aggression from the West going back to Napoleon.

2. Ukraine was the site of armed conflict before the Russian invasion in early February 2022, with thousands dying since 2014. What happened in February was an acceleration of the conflict, not an initiating of it.

3. There are great profits for arms dealers (war profiteers) in the deepening of this conflict. These profits come on top of the great profits throughout the Cold War era and the resistance to a post-Cold War “peace dividend.” These profits have been a key factor driving American policies.

4. Our mainstream (corporate) media are mainly repeating what they are being fed by government. Note the lack of dissenting voices in relation to the militarized American response in the core national media (e.g., Times, Post, NPR, CNN, MSNBC, New Yorker, Atlantic).

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Reflecting morally about the conflict in Ukraine [Pacifism Today #6]

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 9 Comments

Ted Grimsrud—April 10, 2022

[In early March, as the conflict in Ukraine gained the world’s attention, I wrote a blog post, “Thinking as an American pacifist about the Russian invasion.” In the weeks since then, I have continued to think—and posted several shorter reflections on Facebook. I have gathered those pieces into this blog post essentially unchanged.]

Some different concerns in response to the Russian invasion [3.9.22]

Like most people I know, I am heartsick about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the possibility of an expanding and continuing conflict. However, I don’t notice many other people voicing some of my main concerns.

It was almost 50 years ago that I first learned that my country’s leaders regularly, and to devastating effect, lied to justify engagement in unjust and disastrous military actions around the world. When I was in college, I learned to know numerous Vietnam War vets who told me stories that made my hair stand on end. To a man, they bitterly spoke of the lies we Americans were being told about that war.

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