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Once upon a time, the Europeans had the copyright on naming lengthy wars: the Hundred Years' War, the Eighty Years' War, the Thirty Years' War. I suspect, however, that it's past time for the U.S. to enter that competition. After all, soon after we arrive at September 11, 2021, barring a genuine surprise, this country will have been fighting its twenty-first-century wars unsuccessfully for two decades. In other words, the conflict launched as the Global War on Terror in the days after the 9/11 attacks (the one that then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld imagined targeting terror networks in up to 60 countries) has never either faintly succeeded or ended. It's only spread to ever newer realms of death and disaster in distant lands (while bouncing back on this country in ever stranger ways), even as trillions and trillions of taxpayer dollars went down the drain.
Shouldn't the increasingly riven citizens of this land finally give a name to their military's wars that are never won and show no sign of ever really ending? The Twenty Years' War is the obvious candidate. Or maybe it would be more accurate since those European conflicts ebbed and flowed to call them our Seventy Years' War, starting with the Korean war, Washington's original "forever war," which began in June 1950 on a peninsula where peace has yet to be declared.
Retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, TomDispatch regular, and editor of the Bracing Views blog William Astore has a somewhat different suggestion. Isn't it time, he wonders, whether 70 years later or 20 years later, to begin to use a word that's more or less fallen out of the American vocabulary in this century: peace? Tom
Joe Biden's Peace Force?
A Multipoint Plan to End War as We Know It
When it comes to war, if personnel is policy, America is yet again in deep trouble.
As retired Army Major Danny Sjursen recently pointed out at TomDispatch, when it comes to foreign policy, President Joe Biden's new cabinet and advisers are well stocked with retired generals, reconstituted neocons, unapologetic hawks, and similar war enthusiasts. Biden himself has taken to asking God to protect the troops whenever he makes a major speech. (How about protecting them by bringing them home from our pointless wars?) "Defense" spending, as war spending is generally known in this country, remains at record levels at $740.5 billion for fiscal year 2021. Talk of a new cold war with Russia or China (or both) paradoxically warms Pentagon offices and corridors with yet more funds. The only visible dove of peace at Biden's inaugural was the giant golden brooch worn by Lady Gaga. So what exactly is to be done?
Peace-driven progressive policies will not emerge easily from the rainbow kettle of hawks Biden has so far assembled, but his inaugural speech did mention leading and inspiring others globally "not merely by the example of our power but by the power of our example." It would have been an apt rhetorical flourish indeed, if not for this country's "forever wars" in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere across the Greater Middle East and Africa. America's harsh war-fighting reality suggests that "the example of our power" still remains standard operating procedure inside the Washington Beltway. How could this possibly be changed?
I have a few ideas for Biden a 10-point plan, in fact, for turning his softball rhetoric into hardball reality. Consider, Mr. President, the following powerful examples you could set as America's latest commander-in-chief:
1. Stop the U.S. from building new generations of nuclear weapons and downsize the vast existing American arsenal, while launching global negotiations to work toward the elimination of all such arsenals. The U.S. military is set to spend well over a trillion dollars in the coming decades to "modernize" its nuclear triad of bombers and land-based and submarine-launched missiles. Such a staggering "investment" can only move the world closer to nuclear Armageddon. If America is to lead by example when it comes to the ultimate power on this planet, why not begin by cancelling this trillion-dollar-nightmare as part of a new global anti-nuclear initiative? Why not commit us, long term, to the elimination of all nuclear weapons everywhere, while moving to adopt a "no-first-use" policy?
2. When it comes to President Biden's commitment to slow climate change and clean up the environment, why not do something in military terms? America's armed forces have an enormous appetite for fossil fuels. The Pentagon also has a sordid record when it comes to the poisoning of the environment. (Consider the legacy of Agent Orange in Vietnam, or the military's burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the birth defects and severe health problems that were linked to the munitions its forces used in assaulting the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004.) If the president wants to set an example when it comes to demilitarizing this over-armed, over-polluted planet of ours, reducing both the military's fossil-fuel emissions and its poisonous munitions would be a powerful way to start.
3. End this century's forever wars and radically downsize this country's unprecedented global network of military bases. Driving the colossal size of today's military is what my old service, the Air Force, likes to call its "global reach, global power" mission. At least in theory, that mission, in turn, helps justify the sprawling network of 800 or so overseas bases, a network that costs more than $100 billion a year to maintain. Such bases not only consume resources needed here in the U.S. and help stoke those forever wars, but they present high-value targets to opponents and incite ill-feeling and resistance from "host" countries. So, downsizing that global base structure would be an act of peace and fiscal sanity.
4. Make major cuts in the country's war budget. Fewer bases and fewer or no wars should translate into a far lower defense budget. Somewhere in the neighborhood of $400 billion annually to defend this country and cover its real "national security" interests seems reasonable for the self-styled lone superpower. The money saved (roughly $340 billion based on this year's budget) could then perhaps be partly rebated directly to American families in need in this pandemic. Perhaps every American family earning less than $50,000 a year could see a rebate on their taxes directly attributable to downsizing that budget and America's imperial footprint overseas. Taking a page from Donald Trump, President Biden, as America's thrifty and giving commander-in-chief, could even have his name put on those rebate checks. Call it a long-delayed peace dividend. Regular Americans, after all, need such "dividends" far more than giant defense contractors like Boeing or Raytheon. And don't get me started on the need to invest in rebuilding this nation's infrastructure at a moment when the extremities associated with climate change threaten to devastate parts of the country.
5. Create a Department of Peace (here's looking at you, Dennis Kucinich) with influence at least approaching that of the so-called Department of Defense. Currently, the U.S. military is all about power projection, domination of the global battlespace, and similar buzzwords that add up to exporting violence abroad, special op by special op, drone by drone. You are what you do and the U.S. military does permanent war with plenty of "collateral damage." (Picture mutilated black and brown bodies and flattened and poisoned cities and towns.) If the U.S. government can create a Space Force just to fulfill the fantasies of Donald Trump, then why not a peace force, too? (America's current, humble Peace Corps asked for $401 million for Fiscal Year 2021, roughly the cost of four underperforming F-35 jet fighters.) Peace, much like war, doesn't just happen. You have to work at it and that would be precisely the mission of the Department of Peace.
6. Pay attention, for once, to President Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1961 farewell address and exert rigorous oversight and zealous control over the military-industrial complex. That means ending the 2001 AUMF, the authorization for use of military force that Congress passed in a climate of panic and revenge in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 (though it was only to be against those associated in some fashion with those terror attacks), and the second one Congress authorized in 2002 in preparation for the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq. They have been misused and abused by presidents ever since. Furthermore, end any conflict that hasn't been authorized by a direct Congressional declaration of war. That means withdrawing all U.S. troops from Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and elsewhere across the Greater Middle East and Africa. America's security is not, in fact, directly threatened by those countries. As a self-declared democracy, the United States should set an example by not fighting wars disconnected from the people's will and the true needs of national defense.
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