Overall, Swanson points out, with the money America now spends on war, we could provide a host of workable programs to meet real human needs from education to the elimination of poverty and major diseases--both in the U.S. and around the world. He concedes that Americans don't now have the political will to overturn our present system dedicated to the special interests of the few for one that meets the real human needs of the many. Yet, he emphasizes, implementing a Global Marshall Plan is entirely within our reach, and its towering moral superiority over what we do with the same money now should continue to motivate us to pursue and demand it.
Some Concluding Thoughts of My Own
In the context of David Swanson's overview of an activist program to outlaw war, I'd like to add a few thoughts of my own about why the successful outcome of that project is important.
First, given the characteristics of our modern technological age, war is unlikely to be entered into by any major power for the reason that must be publicly proclaimed: that it is necessary as a last resort to defend the country's vital interests. For the U.S., especially, war is instead the end point of a system of interlinked power centers whose aim is to maintain the country's economic and strategic pre-eminence throughout the world. To carry out that purpose, America annually spends more on the military than do the next eight nations combined. It also maintains military bases in 175 countries; stages provocative displays of armed might close to rival nations; constantly demonizes unfriendly or desperate national leaders; maintains a relentless stockpiling of weapons, including new nuclear weapons; keeps an army of war planners constantly seeking new applications for those weapons; and makes billons and billions of dollars as by far the world's leading arms merchant. The U.S. is now also undertaking at immense expense a modernization of its nuclear arsenal, despite the fact that that project will encourage additional nations to develop their own nuclear weapons but will have no deterrent effect on non-state terrorist groups that represent the only realistic military threat to America.
Doing all these things to prepare for war is undoubtedly effective in cowing such major state competitors, or adversaries, as China, Russia and Iran, but it does little to help defeat the only enemies with which the U.S. is actually engaged in armed conflict--principally, terrorist groups in the Middle East. In that arena, a good offense doesn't necessarily translate to a good defense. Instead, it generates resentment, blowback, and hatred, which have served as recruitment tools for expanding and augmenting the terrorist threat against America and its allies throughout the world. Interestingly, the U.S. use of drones is the greatest provocation to hatred. This display of America's superior technology, which allows its operators to kill by stealth with no danger to themselves, strips the war-making of any hint of a heroic fight. And, by the inevitable collateral killing of innocent civilians, along with rank-and-file terrorist fighters and their leaders, the drone attacks must seem an extreme act of disrespect for the dignity of the humans living under their assault--those in Pakistan being perhaps the prime example.
As is evident from this sketch, the actual waging of war by the U.S. is at best a futile undertaking and, in a nuclear world, at worst potentially fatal. The only benefit the country derives from its war-making capabilities is the intimidation of potential adversaries who might stand in the way of its overriding interest in maintaining and expanding global hegemony. That benefit comes, however, not only at a moral cost, but at the cost of government discretionary funds that could be used instead for the constructive purpose of building a better America and helping to build a better world.
I agree with David Swanson and World Beyond War that war, and the preparation for war, should be outlawed as instruments of security by all nations of the world. But to do that, I think at least two fundamental changes in the mindset of world leaders are essential. The first is a recognition by all national governments that, in today's nuclear world, war itself is far more dangerous to the state and its society than the failure to defeat or intimidate any putative adversary. The second is a concomitant willingness by those governments to suspend the scope of their national sovereignty to the extent needed to accept binding arbitration by a sanctioned international body of any intractable international or intra-national conflicts in which they might become involved. Such a sacrifice would not be easy, since the right of unqualified sovereignty has been the defining attribute of nation-states throughout history. On the other hand, a rational curb on sovereignty is not out of the question, since a devotion to peace, which requires such a curb, is a central value in the belief systems of all developed cultures. Given the stakes involved--a choice between, on the one hand, peace and a decent life for all, and, on the other, a world threatened by nuclear or environmental destruction--we can only hope the leaders of nations will soon choose to reconcile their differences by reason rather than violence.
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