Joey and Volodymir
How the Biden Doctrine Courts Thermonuclear War
The toxic doctrines of American Exceptionalism and Pax Americana that informs and fuels American foreign relations are pushing humankind to the brink of extinction. The former exempts the United States from playing by the rules imposed on less powerful nations, and the latter views the entire globe as a legitimate American Sphere of Influence. This is rationalized by declaring the US an Atlantic and Pacific power, imposing the Monroe Doctrine throughout the Americas, and declaring oneself the benevolent hegemon in the unipolar world that emerged after the dismantling of the Soviet Union.
Paradoxically, the US claims the central objective of foreign policy is promoting democracy from Eastern Europe to the Middle East, while undermining that policy with actions – military and diplomatic – that help the anti-democratic oil sheikdoms of the region remain in power to insure the uninterrupted flow of petroleum to the industrialized economies of the US and her western allies. A blatant contradiction that can be shamelessly ignored because of American Exceptionalism!
This policy of shaping the world to an American blueprint is the ultimate expression of Pax Americana, a modern reinvention of the ancient Pax Romana, or “Roman Peace,” an order imposed upon the world by Roman military might. It is a vision of the world that insure the US will forever be at war with someone somewhere. A cursory examination of American history will readily verify the veracity of this claim. When the doctrines of American Exceptionalism and Pax Americana are combined, we get actions like the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Iran in 1953, and the Bush war of choice a half century later during 2003 in Iraq. The Iraq invasion was launched when the US government under George II, a rich white Texan, a shill for the oil Oligarchs who is rumored to have blood ties to the British royals, sat in his Washington office and decided that Iraq needed a “regime change.”
Then he ordered the US armed forces to carry it out, despite the absence of any evidence that this small Arab country half a world away, posed any threat to the USA. Which possessed the most powerful military in the world. Striking Iraq with a devastating arial assault code named “Shock and Awe,” US forces wreaked havoc on the Iraqi people, Killing nearly 8, 000 in the first 60 days. The Russians, who invaded a nation on their doorsteps that was flirting with joining a hostile 30 nation military alliance posing an existential threat to their nation, have killed 8, 000 Ukrainians in a year. Yet they are accused of genocide and we hear talk of President Putin standing trial in the World Court for “war crimes.”
But after killing nearly a million Iraqi’s by several estimates, and devastating their infrastructure, creating problems for the health and welfare of the Iraqi people that are still suffering from 20 years later, nobody in the US has been charged with war crimes, and besides, the US withdrew from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court at Bush’s direction! While Israel, the US’s staunchest “democratic” ally in the Middle East, routinely ignores UN resolutions and investigations like the Goldberg Report detailing their war crimes. And the whole criminal enterprise in Iraq is justified with the claim that they deposed “the dictator,” Saddam Hussein and “liberated” the Iraqi people.
Despite the fact that by any objective evaluation of their quality of life, the majority of Iraqis are demonstrable worse off after nearly two decades of war in their region. And yet braggadocious Biden has the unmitigated gall to mouth pious propaganda about Russian “genocide” in Ukraine, cheered on by his American and NATO boosters. He has even compared the Russian incursion with the NAZI invasion of Ukraine during the Second World War. Although “Operation Barbarossa” – the code name for the Nazi invasion – was the largest land based invading force in history and their objective was to commit indiscriminate mass murder, exterminating Soviet citizens in order to depopulate this highly fertile region of Russia and replace them with Germans. Thus, making Ukraine the breadbasket of Germany as a central part of his policy of Lebensraum – expanding the “living space” of a densely populated Germany.
Hence the NAZIS murdered a million and a half Ukrainian Jews for fun, initiating the Holocaust! If the Russian objectives were in any way similar to the NAZIS, there would be no “corridors of escape,” for they would simply massacre any concentrations of Ukrainians. It is a spectacular display of blatant lies and hypocrisy, systematic disinformation designed to confuse a clueless American public that appalls objective observers and would even shame the devil! However, Russia is not Iraq, a helpless desert state. Even though many Americans, following the lead of Blundering Joe Biden, insist upon treating them as such. But their clueless arrogance does not mitigate the fact that Vladimir Putin is sitting atop the largest nuclear arsenal in the world, and thus has the power to take out every capital city in NATO within 20 minutes or less! And no amount of silly derisive comments like “Russia is a just a gas station with nuclear weapons,” can alter that crucial fact. Alas, one of the most troubling observations one hears from learned statesmen and foreign policy wonks who were molded in the Cold War during the 20th century – from Gorbachev and George Kennan to Vladimir Posner and Henry Kissinger – is that the present generation of statesmen and policy wonks are far too cavalier in their attitude toward the probability of nuclear war.
Alas, from all the observable evidence, this is clearly the case with Joe Biden, although he is old enough to also have had his views shaped by the Cold War. Yet Clueless Joe, his advisors, and the leaders of the NATO alliance appear to have drawn the wrong conclusions, and thus remain innocent of the deeper wisdom to be gained from the experience. Indeed, Biden has ignored the central lessons learned by the two Americans who were tasked with waging nuclear war against Communist Russia, the now defunct Soviet Union, during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Considering how close the US and Russia – who possessed nuclear arsenals with the power to destroy all life on this planet several times over – came to all out nuclear war, one would expect wise leaders to heed the warnings of those who have been to the brink and peeked into the abyss. The perspectives of these two men – President John Kennedy who authorized the use of nuclear weapons, and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara who was tasked with giving the command to deploy them – was drastically altered on matters of war and peace by this experience. It was a baptism by fire that invested them with new insights that are critical to this moment in human history.
If ever there was a time to heed the warning of the Harvard philosopher George Santayana about the importance of learning the lessons history can teach in order to avoid repeating disastrous mistakes, it is just now. When the world is once again poised on the brink of nuclear Armageddon. And according to the Union of Atomic Scientist – who understand the problem best – we are dramatically closer to Doomsday than during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Back then they set the hands of their “Doomsday Clock” at seven minutes to midnight – the moment of nuclear extinction – as I write the hands are set at 100 seconds to midnight! It would seem that leaders who are not only presumed to be sane, but the best and brightest among us, would hasten to change course dramatically.
However, that is not the case with Joey and his 30-nation band of NATO vassals, whose adventurism in Eastern Europe has brought us to the brink of annihilation. By leading the effort of NATO nations to supply the Ukrainians with more and more technologically sophisticated weapons, with the stated intention of empowering them for a military defeat of Russian forces, Crazy Joe is blatantly ignoring the two principal lessons President Kennedy and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara says they learned from their flirtation with nuclear catastrophe. McNamara’s revelation came in his documentary film “The Fog of War, “made decades later. And Kennedy testified to his enlightenment in a speech presented at American University a few months after the world survived the Cuban crisis.
The paramount lesson for McNamara was that the best way to avoid disaster is to develop the ability to view the dispute from the perspective of your adversary. And thus consider their options should you take certain actions. He came to this understanding after decades of deep reflection and interviewing his counterparts in the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War, years after after the passions that fueled the conflict had subsided. And President Kennedy summarized the essence of his great enlightenment with this statement: ”Never put a nuclear armed adversary in a position where his only choices are to retreat in humiliation and defeat, or deploy his nuclear weapons.”
Based upon his words and deeds, especially during his secret foray into Eastern Europe, where he suddenly popped up in war torn Ukraine like Banquo’s Ghost, clearly both lessons have sailed over the fuzzy grey head of old bungling Biden, whose reckless behavior suggests he ought to be sitting and whittling under the old cedar tree, spittn a chaw of tabaccy and spinning yarns reminiscing about the good old times back in da day, when he was a hot shot politician in the historic Obama Administration. Instead of playing Russian Roulette with the fate of the earth based on delusions of grandeur.
The evidence of those delusions was dramatically on display in the public proclamations made by Biden in Ukraine and Poland. Sometimes it is difficult to discern who his intended audience is, and what is his message. When Biden visited Poland in 2014, he stood in the same spot where he spoke on this occasion and said of President Putin:” For God’s sake this man cannot remain in power!” This time he called Putin a “war criminal!” Which is a ludicrous comment from a man representing a country where 21 years ago John Bolton, The walrus mustachioed US Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, sent a letter to Kofi Annan, the Ghanian Secretary General of the United Nations, unambiguously stating the US position on participation in the International Criminal Court: ”the United States does not intend to become a party to the treaty”…”accordingly, the United States has no legal obligations arising from its signature on December 31, 2000.”
He was referring to President Bill Clinton’s signing of the treaty just before the deadline expired. When Bill Clinton signed the ICC Treaty he said:
“The United States is today signing the 1998 Rome Treaty on the International Criminal Court. In taking this action, we join more than 130 other countries that have signed by the December 31, 2000, deadline established in the treaty. We do so to reaffirm our strong support for international accountability and for bringing to justice perpetrators of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. We do so as well because we wish to remain engaged in making the ICC an instrument of impartial and effective justice in the years to come.”
However, high on the hubris of American Exceptionalism, the US Senate refused to ratify the Treaty. And less than a year and a half later the Bush Administration rejected it outright. Using the successful 9/11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center as a pretext, the Bush Administration was on the verge of implementing a previously developed plan by the policy wonks at the right-wing neocon think tank Project for A New American Century – presented in the policy paper “Redesigning America’s Defenses”- to attack Iraq and overthrow its head of state, Saddam Hussein, an illegal action under international law. Since the nature of the invasion virtually insured war crimes would be committed by the invading American soldiers, the Bush Administration was removing itself from the jurisdiction of the court. Which is compelling evidence that the criminal attack on Iraq was premeditated.
The concerns expressed in a press release from the hawkish Pax-Americanist Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who was an avid proponent of the Iraq attack, just a few hours after Bolton’s letter makes clear their intent in repudiating the authority of the ICC. The communique explained that the Administration’s rejection of the treaty was based on “a number of serious objections to the [International Criminal Court] – among them, the lack of adequate checks and balances on powers of the Court’s prosecutor and judges; the dilution of the U.N. Security Council’s authority over international criminal prosecutions; and the lack of any effective mechanism to prevent politicized prosecutions of American service members and officials.”
To put the matter succinctly the USA refused to allow a court over which it had no control decide the guilt or innocence of their actions should the US government be accused of committing war crimes. This is exactly the position that Putin is taking in the Ukraine matter! The Russian government has made it clear that any attempt to arrest Putin anywhere in the world will be regarded as an act of war and they will respond accordingly. Alas, the fact that the US has yet to recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC while touting Putin’s indictment, has been an embarrassment for President Biden when confronted with questions from reporters. But when you view yourself as the “Exceptional Nation” such inconsistencies are overlooked because in the end what the US ruling class really believes in their heart of hearts is: ”Might makes right!”
That’s why the US military budget exceeds those of Russia, China, India, Great Britain, Germany, and Saudi Arabia combined! At 877 billion the US military budget comprises 38 percent of the funding for all the military establishments in the world. The total expenditure on the 20-year wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is estimated to total 8 trillion when all the costs are tallied. A sum that could have completely rebuilt the infrastructure of the USA, paid off college loan debts, and provided expanded benefits to struggling senior citizens.
All things that would have enriched American life. Yet President Biden had to beg Republican members of Congress to vote for a little over a trillion dollars for his “Build Back Better” initiative to help the American people recover from the Covid Pandemic and propel the nation forward. Yet the US government with bi-partisan support has poured 75 billion dollars into their proxy war in Ukraine, which is barely a year old, and has committed itself to more. This is unimpeachable evidence of where US priorities lie.
And while the US routinely accuses China and Russia of being “expansionist” the US has 800 foreign military bases in 80 countries around the world, while Russia has 20 and China has three! Furthermore, China has not been in a war since their brief skirmish with Vietnam in 1979. Which is a subject of snide ridicule from proponents of Pax Americana, who speculate that such an untested force would be no match for battle tested American warriors. To say the least, this is tough talk from a country whose military couldn’t prevail over Vietnamese peasants or backward Muslim Jihadists. But the evidence of which country is the premier warmongering nation in the world lay in the fact that of 246 years of national history since the war of Independence from England in 1776, the USA has been at peace a mere 18 years!
Abandoning any pretense at diplomatic niceties Biden also called Putin “a pure thug,” on his last visit to Ukraine, and again implied that he should be “overthrown.” Which begs the question, to whom is his message intended: NATO nations or the Russian people? Surely Putin remembers that when President Bush said the same things about Saddam Hussein, the US invaded Iraq and removed him from power. In any case, Biden’s recklessness suggests either he does not believe Putin is listening or he just don’t care.
Early on in his Kyiv speech, Biden sounded like the befuddled old man that his harshest Republican critics says he is. After recounting how he asked President Zelensky what he could do for him during a phone conversation with the sound of bombs exploding in the background, as the Russian attack began. Biden contradicts himself:” I don’t really remember what you said to me. But you said and I quote: “Gather the leaders of the world. Ask them to support Ukraine. Gather the leaders of the world and ask them to support Ukraine…That dark night, one year ago, the world was literally at the time bracing for the fall of Kyiv. Seems like a lot longer ago than a year but think back to that year — perhaps even the end of Ukraine. You know, one year later, Kyiv stands. And Ukraine stands. Democracy stands.”
Then Biden recalls with great pride how he had visited Ukraine in 2014, as Vice President. And gleefully recounts how he returned several times to celebrate the Madrian “Revolution of Dignity.” Here a reality check is desperately needed. Imagine if Putin was fighting a proxy war against the US in an alliance with China, in support of a leftist anti-American government in Mexico, and Putin popped up in that neighboring country on our border promising to support Mexico until they defeated the US, while branding Biden a criminal and thug, then calling for his overthrow. If it is true that past is prologue in the story of nations, it does not require much imagination to figure out what the American response is likely to be. It would be the Cuban Missiles Crisis 2.0
And yet this grotesque scenario of nuclear confrontation between the world’s premiere nuclear powers remains a real possibility. And all because, lost in his star-spangled delusions of grandeur, high on the opiate of American Exceptionalism, Joe Biden, in a classic case of folly – as defined by two time Pulitzer Prize winning historian Barbara Tuchman – refuses to heed the lessons of history bequeathed to him by his predecessors, who stood at the command posts of America’s nuclear arsenal when the world was poised on the brink of destruction in 1962.
Yet those are beginning to look like the good old days. When the hands on the Doomsday Clock were set at 7 minutes to midnight…not the 80 seconds that hangs over the juggler of the world like the sword of Damocles. And Crazy Joey seems oblivious to it all…alas he has learned nothing from history. Indeed, in the hurly burly of the present crisis he has revealed himself to be a pompous fool…arguably the most dangerous man in the world! And we are well on the road to repeating the mistakes that led mankind to the brink of extinction in 1962.
That’s why the clearest path to resolving this increasingly dangerous crisis, as I have written before, is to reject the pipe dream of achieving a Ukrainian military victory, call for an immediate cease fire, negotiate the neutrality of Ukraine, drop all economic sanctions against Russia, hold another plebiscite among the ethnic Russian speaking population to determine if they still want to separate from the oppressive ethnic Ukrainian speakers, and quash the ICC indictment against Putin until they also issue indictments for war crimes against George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheyney, and Henry Kissinger. Then to seek a permanent peace in Eastern Europe, a date should be set to discuss the disbanding of NATO, which is, as Donald Trump correctly called it: “A dangerous and costly anachronism.” That assessment is the one-time Donny Dimwit has shown a spark of wisdom…so far as I can discern.
While the Biden administration goes to great lengths to convey the impression that the world supports US actions against Russia, the facts prove otherwise. The fact is that the majority of the peoples of the world do not support American and NATO policy on Ukraine, and according to Dr. Fiona Hill – a top foreign policy wonk in the Trump Administration who fell from favor after testifying in Trump’s impeachment hearings – many nations who were formerly admirers are turning away from American leadership. This movement away from the US is inspired by a disdain for the arrogance and national chauvinism exemplified in the ideology of American Exceptionalism.
In a recent speech in Estonia – a former soviet Republic that has joined NATO as Ukraine aspires to do – Dr. Hill pronounced the death of “Pax Americana.” After pointing out that there is a growing “mutiny” against American global hegemony, she observed: ”In 2023 we hear a resounding no to US domination and see a marked appetite for a world without a hegemon.” Dr. Hill, a Russian expert, went on to argue that the Russians had promoted this rebellion by “cleverly exploiting deep-seated international resistance” to US Pax Americana policies. And she also noted the East/West, North/South character of the split, describing it as conflict between the West and the rest of the world, 0r “Russia and the rest against the United States.” She said Ukraine was suffering from “guilt through association for having direct US support,” And from the perspective of certain countries “Defending Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity gets lost in a morass of skepticism and suspicions about the United States.”
And nowhere is suspicion of the US role and objectives in the Ukraine conflict greater than in Russia. Whose leadership is convinced the objective of NATO’s expansion in Eastern Europe is to encircle their country with a hostile 30 nation military bloc and create an American Sphere of Influence on their border. One need only look at the positioning of NATO nation’s surrounding Russia to understand their fears. As I have previously pointed out, it is a situation that the US would not tolerate for a nano-second if the tables were turned. Hence the perception of what is at stake for the US and Russia in this conflict is radically different and might well explain the lengths each side is willing to go in order to prevail.
The situation can be summed up in a tale my grandfather told me about a hound chasing a hare on a hot summer day. The rabbit darted and dashed and the hound soon tired, gave up the chase, and retired under the shade of a tree. A farmer who had witnessed the chase derided the hound for quitting so easily, calling him a disgrace to his noble breed. To wit the Hound replied: Yeah, but I was just running for my lunch. The rabbit was running for his life!
This begs the obvious question all the pundits and policy wonks refuse to ask yet is critical to this moment of crisis. What would be the response of the US and her NATO allies if Putin, confronted with increasing quantities of advanced weaponry they are supplying to the Ukrainian forces, decides to deploy a tactical i.e., “battlefield” nuclear weapon? He has already hinted at it, no doubt hoping a hint to the wise would be sufficient. And he has also announced that he has put his strategic nuclear missiles on high alert.
And if we are to take him seriously when Putin says the fight to keep Ukraine a neutral territory, unaffiliated with NATO or the European Community, is an existential struggle for Russia, hence they cannot accept defeat – and I believe he believes it – then the use of a tactical nuke to avoid a military defeat is entirely plausible. And depending upon the response of the US and her NATO vassals, it could be the beginning of the end for life on planet earth if things spiral out of control and the doomsday strategic missiles are unleashed. Alas, Joey’s Ukraine folly is playing Russian Roulette with the fate of our world.
If the revelations of modern science, and the persistent evils of white folks -like those shameless Bible thumping Trumpanzee blasphemers on the Christian Right – who continue to prosper despite their myriad dirty deeds and unspeakable iniquities, had not convinced me that God is a myth, I would stretch my hands toward the heavens and call upon her for help, for if ever we needed her intervention…we need her now!
Playing Russian Roulette with the World
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Playthell G. Benjamin
Harlem, New York
June 7, 2023
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Playthell G. Benjamin
Harlem, New York
June 7. 2001