How Long Has Humanity Been at War With Itself?

by DGR News Service | Mar 25, 2024 | NEWS, The Problem: Civilization

Editor’s note: When debating with people about how to create a society without war, the argument always comes up that “back in the stone age humans were also violent” or “back to nature doesn’t work”. Yet historical research shows that even if we shouldn’t romanticise being a cave man or woman, in prehistory humans probably lived the most peaceful life they ever have on earth.

As this article by Deborah Barsky describes, how early Homo species hunted in vast lush territories and formed clan-like groups. They had to stick together against storms and times of hunger, because they knew they were interdependent on each other and on wild nature.

There’s no proof so far for bellicose violence until it comes to the Neolithic age around 12,000 years BC. Only from the times people became sedentary and had unequal access to ressources, archaeologists discovered ancient remains of weapons of war.

That’s somehow good news, because the narrative of humans being evil by force of their genes can likely be false, which means we can liberate ourselves from the excuse of being “only humans” and instead actively abolishing a culture of war and terrorism to create a new world where we’d be inspired by our ancestors and sitting calmly at the fire.

This article was produced by Human Bridges.

How Long Has Humanity Been at War With Itself?

By Deborah Barsky/Independent Media Institute

The famous American astronomer Carl Sagan once said, “You have to know the past to understand the present.” But can we ever know the history of human origins well enough to understand why humans wage large-scale acts of appalling cruelty on other members of our own species? In January 2024, the Geneva Academy was monitoring no less than 110 armed conflicts globally. While not all of these reach mainstream media outlets, each is equally horrific in terms of the physical violence and mental cruelty we inflict on each other.

Chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, are known to partake in violent intra-specific skirmishes, typically to preserve privileged access to resources in response to breaches in territorial boundaries. But only humans engage so extensively in large-scale warfare.

Do massive acts of intra- or interpopulational violence conform with Darwinian precepts of natural selection, or is this something we do as a competitive response to the stresses of living in such large populations? Looking back in time can help us find answers to such questions. Evidence preserved in the archeological record can tell us about when and under what conditions the preludes to warlike behaviors emerged in the past. Scientific reasoning can then transform this information into viable hypotheses that we can use to understand ourselves in today’s world.

As archeologists continue to unearth new fossil evidence at an increasing rate, so too are they piecing together the human story as one of complex interactions played out by (a growing number of) different species of the genus Homo that lived during the tens of thousands of years preceding the emergence—and eventual global dominance—of our own species: Homo sapiens. In fact, scientists have recognized more than a dozen (now extinct) species of Homo that thrived over the millennia, sometimes sharing the same landscapes and occasionally even interbreeding with one another. Millions of years of hybridization is written into the genomes of modern human populations.

Although we know very little about what these paleo-encounters might have been like, progress in science and technology is helping archeologists to find ways to piece together the puzzle of interspecific human relationships that occurred so long ago and that contributed to making us who we are today. In spite of these advances, the fossil record remains very fragmentary, especially concerning the older phases of human evolution.

First consider Homo, or H. habilis, so-named because a significant increase in stone tool-making is recognized following its emergence some 2.8 million years ago in East Africa. The evidence for the beginnings of this transformational event that would set off the spiraling evolutionary history of human technological prowess is relatively sparse. But such ancient (Oldowan) toolkits do become more abundant from this time forward, at first in Africa, and then into the confines of Eurasia by around 1.8 million years ago. Throughout this period, different kinds of hominins adopted and innovated stone tool making, socializing it into normalized behavior by teaching it to their young and transforming it into a cutting-edge survival strategy. We clearly observe the positive repercussions of this major advancement in our evolutionary history from the expanding increases in both the number of archeological sites and their geographical spread. Unevenly through time, occurrences of Oldowan sites throughout the Old World begin to yield more numerous artifacts, attesting to the progressive demographic trends associated with tool-making hominins.

Tool-making was a highly effective adaptive strategy that allowed early Homo species (like H. georgicus and H. antecessor) to define their own niches within multiple environmental contexts, successfully competing for resources with large carnivorous animals. Early humans used stone tools to access the protein-rich meat, viscera, and bone marrow from large herbivore carcasses, nourishing their energy-expensive brains. The latter show significant increases in volume and organizational complexity throughout this time period.

But were these early humans also competing with one another? So far (and keeping in mind the scarcity of skeletal remains dating to this period) the paleoanthropological record has not revealed signs of intraspecific violence suffered by Oldowan peoples. Their core-and-flake technologies and simple pounding tools do not include items that could be defined as functional armaments. While a lack of evidence does not constitute proof, we might consider recent estimates in paleodemography, backed by innovative digitized modelization methods and an increasing pool of genetic data that indicates relatively low population densities during the Oldowan.

Isolated groups consisted of few individuals, organized perhaps into clan-like social entities, widely spread over vast, resource-rich territories. These hominins invested in developing technological and social skills, cooperating with one another to adapt to new challenges posed by the changing environmental conditions that characterized the onset of the Quaternary period some 2.5 million years ago. Complex socialization processes evolved to perfect and share the capacity for technological competence, abilities that had important repercussions on the configuration of the brain that would eventually set humanity apart from other kinds of primates. Technology became inexorably linked to cognitive and social advances, fueling a symbiotic process now firmly established between anatomical and technological evolution.

By around one million years ago, Oldowan-producing peoples had been replaced by the technologically more advanced Acheulian hominins, globally attributed to H. erectus sensu lato. This phase of human evolution lasted nearly one and a half million years (globally from 1.75 to around 350,000 years ago) and is marked by highly significant techno-behavioral revolutions whose inception is traced back to Africa. Groundbreaking technologies like fire-making emerged during the Acheulian, as did elaborate stone production methods requiring complex volumetric planning and advanced technical skills. Tools became standardized into specifically designed models, signaling cultural diversity that varied geographically, creating the first land-linked morpho-technological traditions. Ever-greater social investment was required to learn and share the techniques needed to manipulate these technologies, as tools were converted into culture and technical aptitude into innovation.

In spite of marked increases in site frequencies and artifact densities throughout the Middle Pleistocene, incidences of interspecific violence are rarely documented and no large-scale violent events have been recognized so far. Were some Acheulian tools suitable for waging inter-populational conflicts? In the later phases of the Acheulian, pointed stone tools with signs of hafting and even wooden spears appear in some sites. But were these sophisticated tool kits limited to hunting? Or might they also have served for other purposes?

Culture evolves through a process I like to refer to as “technoselection” that in many ways can be likened to biological natural selection. In prehistory, technological systems are characterized by sets of morphotypes that reflect a specific stage of cognitive competence. Within these broad defining categories, however, we can recognize some anomalies or idiosyncratic techno-forms that can be defined as potential latent within a given system. As with natural selection, potential is recognized as structural anomalies that may be selected for under specific circumstances and then developed into new or even revolutionary technologies, converted through inventiveness. Should they prove advantageous to deal with the challenges at hand, these innovative technologies are adopted and developed further, expanding upon the existing foundational know-how and creating increasingly larger sets of material culture. Foundational material culture therefore exists in a state of exponential growth, as each phase is built upon the preceding one in a cumulative process perceived as acceleration.

I have already suggested elsewhere that the advanced degree of cultural complexity attained by the Late Acheulian, together with the capacity to produce fire, empowered hominins to adapt their nomadic lifestyles within more constrained territorial ranges. Thick depositional sequences containing evidence of successive living floors recorded in the caves of Eurasia show that hominins were returning cyclically to the same areas, most likely in pace with seasonal climate change and the migrational pathways of the animals they preyed upon. As a result, humans established strong links with the specific regions within which they roamed. More restrictive ranging caused idiosyncrasies to appear within the material and behavioral cultural repertoires of each group: specific ways of making and doing. As they lived and died in lands that were becoming their own, so too did they construct territorial identities that were in contrast with those of groups living in neighboring areas. As cultural productions multiplied, so did these imagined cultural “differences” sharpen, engendering the distinguishing notions of “us” and “them.”

Even more significant perhaps was the emergence and consolidation of symbolic thought processes visible, for example, in cultural manifestations whose careful manufacture took tool-making into a whole new realm of aesthetic concerns rarely observed in earlier toolkits. By around 400,000 years ago in Eurasia, pre-Neandertals and then Neandertal peoples were conferring special treatment to their dead, sometimes even depositing them with other objects suggestive of nascent spiritual practices. These would eventually develop into highly diverse social practices, like ritual and taboo. Cultural diversity was the keystone for new systems of belief that reinforced imagined differences separating territorially distinct groups.

Anatomically modern humans (H. sapiens) appeared on the scene some 300,000 years ago in Africa and spread subsequently into lands already occupied by other culturally and spiritually advanced species of Homo. While maintaining a nomadic existence, these hominins were undergoing transformational demographic trends that resulted in more frequent interpopulation encounters. This factor, combined with the growing array of material and behavioral manifestations of culture (reflected by artifact multiplicity) provided a repository from which hominin groups stood in contrast with one another. At the same time, the mounting importance of symbolic behaviors in regulating hominin lifestyles contributed to reinforcing both real (anatomic) and imagined (cultural) variances. Intergroup encounters favored cultural exchange, inspiring innovation and driving spiraling techno-social complexity. In addition, they provided opportunities for sexual exchanges necessary for broadening gene pool diversity and avoiding inbreeding. At the same time, a higher number of individuals within each group would have prompted social hierarchization as a strategy to ensure the survival of each unit.

While much has been written about what Middle Paleolithic inter-specific paleo-encounters might have been like, in particular between the Neandertals and H. sapiens, solid evidence is lacking to support genocidal hypotheses or popularized images of the former annihilating the latter by way of violent processes. Today, such theories, fed by suppositions typical of the last century of the relative techno-social superiority of our own species, are falling by the wayside. Indeed, advances in archeology now show not only that we were interbreeding with the Neandertals, but also that Neandertal lifeways and cerebral processes were of comparable sophistication to those practiced by the modern humans they encountered. Presently, apart from sparse documentation for individual violent encounters, there is no evidence that large-scale violence caused the extinction of the Neandertals or of other species of Homo thriving coevally with modern humans. That said, it has been observed that the expansion of H. sapiens into previously unoccupied lands, like Australia and the Americas, for example, coincides ominously with the extinction of mega-faunal species. Interestingly, this phenomenon is not observed in regions with a long record of coexistence between humans and mega mammals, like Africa or India. It has been hypothesized that the reason for this is that animals that were unfamiliar with modern humans lacked the instinct to flee and hide from them, making them easy targets for mass hunting.

If large-scale human violence is difficult to identify in the Paleolithic record, it is common in later, proto-historic iconography. Evidence for warlike behavior (accumulations of corpses bearing signs of humanly-induced trauma) appear towards the end of the Pleistocene and after the onset of the Neolithic Period (nearly 12,000 years ago) in different parts of the world, perhaps in relation to new pressures due to climate change. Arguably, sedentary lifestyles and plant and animal domestication—hallmarks of the Neolithic—reset social and cultural norms of hunter-gatherer societies. Additionally, it may be that the amassing and storing of goods caused new inter-relational paradigms to take form, with individuals fulfilling different roles in relation to their capacities to benefit the group to which they belonged. The capacity to elaborate an abstract, symbolic worldview transformed land and resources into property and goods that “belonged” to one or another social unit, in relation to claims on the lands upon which they lived and from which they reaped the benefits. The written documents of the first literate civilizations, relating mainly to the quantification of goods, are revelatory of the effects of this transformational period of intensified production, hoarding and exchange. Differences inherent to the kinds of resources available in environmentally diverse parts of the world solidified unequal access to the kinds of goods invested with “value” by developing civilizations and dictated the nature of the technologies that would be expanded for their exploitation. Trading networks were established and interconnectedness favored improvements in technologies and nascent communication networks, stimulating competition to obtain more, better, faster.

From this vast overview, we can now more clearly see how the emergence of the notion of “others” that arose in the later phases of the Lower Paleolithic was key for kindling the kinds of behavioral tendencies required for preserving the production-consumption mentality borne after the Neolithic and still in effect in today’s overpopulated capitalist world.

Evolution is not a linear process and culture is a multifaceted phenomenon, but it is the degree to which we have advanced technology that sets us apart from all other living beings on the planet. War is not pre-programmed in our species, nor is it a fatality in our modern, globalized existence. Archeology teaches us that it is a behavior grounded in our own manufactured perception of “difference” between peoples living in distinct areas of the world with unequal access to resources. A social unit will adopt warlike behavior as a response to resource scarcity or other kinds of external challenges (for example, territorial encroachment by an ‘alien’ social unit). Finding solutions to eradicating large-scale warfare thus begins with using our technologies to create equality among all peoples, rather than developing harmful weapons of destruction.

From the emergence of early Homo, natural selection and technoselection have developed in synchronicity through time, transforming discrete structural anomalies into evolutionary strategies in unpredictable and interdependent ways. The big difference between these two processes at play in human evolution is that the former is guided by laws of universal equilibrium established over millions of years, while the latter exists in a state of exponential change that is outside of the stabilizing laws of nature.

Human technologies are transitive in the sense that they can be adapted to serve for different purposes in distinct timeframes or by diverse social entities. Many objects can be transformed into weapons. In the modern world plagued by terrorism, for example, simple home-made explosives, airplanes, drones, or vans can be transformed into formidable weapons, while incredibly advanced technologies can be used to increase our capacity to inflict desensitized and dehumanized destruction on levels never before attained.

Meanwhile, our advanced communication venues serve to share selected global events of warfare numbing the public into passive acceptance. While it is difficult to determine the exact point in time when humans selected large-scale warfare as a viable behavioral trait, co-opting their astounding technological prowess as a strategy to compete with each other in response to unprecedented demographic growth, there may yet be time for us to modify this trajectory toward resiliency, cooperation, and exchange.

Allegations of the Use of Chemical Weapons by Turkey

by DGR News Service | Dec 5, 2022 | ACTION, Culture of Resistance

Editor’s note: The Rojava conflict, also known as the Rojava Revolution, is a political upheaval and military conflict taking place in northern Syria and Iraq known among Kurds as Western Kurdistan or Rojava.

In this social revolution a prominent role is played by women both on the battlefield and within the newly formed political system, as well as the implementation of democratic confederalism, a form of libertarian socialism that emphasizes decentralization, gender equality and the need for local governance through direct democracy.

As an eco-feminist organization, DGR agrees with Women Defend Rojava that all women should aspire to the principles of self-defense. That this consciousness must be established in society as a culture of resistance. The power of the State will always attack those who resist and rise up against patriarchal violence and fight for a free life. As part of the women’s revolution, the Rojava takes an important role in building alternatives to the current patriarchal-capitalist world system and defending them.

“A society can not be free with out women’s liberation” (Abdullah Öcalan)

This is an open letter from Women Defend Rojava and other signatories requesting an investigation into Turkey’s alleged use of chemical weapons in Kurdish people based in Syria and Iraq.

Open letter from Women Defend Rojava

On the occasion of November 30, the Day of Remembrance of all Victims of Chemical Warfare, we write with deep concern about disturbing allegations of the use of prohibited weapons by the Turkish military in its ongoing military operations against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Moreover, we are writing at a time in which the Turkish state is once again targeting civilians inside Syria and mobilizing for another possible ground invasion.

On October 18, local media released video footage showing the impacts of alleged chemical weapons exposure on two PKK guerrillas. Both were among 17 of the group’s fighters who lost their lives as a result of alleged chemical attacks in recent months.

The footage followed a report published by the NGO International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) last month that examined other allegations of Turkish chemical weapons use and called for an international investigation based on its findings.

In 2021, human rights monitors and local media reported at least once instance of civilian harm potentially caused by alleged Turkish chemical weapons use. The authors of the IPPNW report attempted to meet with the impacted civilians, but were blocked from doing so by the Kurdistan Regional Government.

We understand that the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) can only investigate allegations of chemical weapons use when a request is made by a state party.

However, it is our view that these existing mechanisms do not reflect the realities of warfare today. Peoples without states and non-state political and military actors are deeply involved in modern conflicts. So are autocratic regimes that stifle the voices of those who wish to hold their governments to account for their behavior in war.

Both of these conditions are relevant here. The Kurdish people do not have a government that can speak up for them. They live under repressive regimes with powerful allies in the West—Turkey, for example, is supported by its NATO allies despite consistent evidence of serious human rights abuses.

This means that, while Kurds are disproportionately more likely to be subjected to war crimes and violations of international law as a result of their status as an oppressed minority, they are also disproportionately less likely to have access to justice mechanisms to hold perpetrators accountable.

In order to be effective, human rights law and the laws of war must be implemented as universally as possible, free from political considerations. There should be as many avenues as possible for credible allegations of human rights violations and violations of the laws of war to be investigated by impartial international bodies—particularly serious violations like the use of prohibited weapons.

Furthermore, these investigations should not simply be aimed at the historical record. They should build towards justice and accountability for all who violate international law, as well as durable political solutions to ongoing conflicts.

To that end, we the undersigned make the following recommendations:

To the OPCW:

Amend investigation procedures to allow greater access to justice and accountability for alleged chemical weapons use.
Investigate allegations that Turkey may have used chemical weapons in Iraqi Kurdistan.

To the government of Turkey:

End all cross-border military activity in Iraq and Syria immediately.
Cooperate fully with local and international investigations of alleged chemical weapons use and other alleged war crimes and human rights abuses and hold perpetrators accountable if violations are found.
Return to peace negotiations with the PKK to resolve the Kurdish issue by political means.

To the Kurdistan Regional Government:

Allow international investigators full access to impacted regions and communities to determine if Turkey has used chemical weapons in its military operations.

To concerned governments:

Request an investigation of alleged Turkish chemical weapons use via existing OPCW mechanism.
End arms sales and security assistance to Turkey.
Pressure Turkey to end cross-border military operations in Iraq and Syria.
Support and assist in return to peace negotiations between Turkey and the PKK to resolve the Kurdish issue by political means.

To international civil society:

Support the demands listed here by signing this letter and engaging with relevant governments and international institutions.

November 30, 2022

Signatories:

Souad Abdelrahman, Head of Palestine Women’s Association – Palestine
Dr Goran Abdullah – Scotland
Ismet Agirman, Kurdish activist – UK
Prof Dr Tayseer A. Alousi, Secretary General of the Arab Assembly for Supporting Kurdish Issue and President Sumerian Observatory for Human Rights – Netherlands
Dr Maha Al-Sakban, Centre for Women’s Human Rights board member – Iraq
Mick Antoniw MS, Senedd Constituency Member, Welsh Labour Group, Counsel General and Minister for the Constitution – Wales
Chiara Aquino, PhD Candidate, University of Edinburgh – Scotland
Benedetta Argentieri, Journalist and filmmaker – Italy
Rezgar Bahary, Journalist – UK
Naamat Bedrdine, Politician and writer – Lebanon
Walden Bello, International Adjunct Professor of Sociology, SUNY Binghamton, and recipient ot the Right Livelihood Award (aka Alternative Nobel Prize) in 2003 – USA
Janet Biehl, Independent scholar, author, artist – USA
Jonathan Bloch, Writer – UK
Baroness Christine Blower, House of Lords – UK
Debbie Bookchin, Journalist and author – USA
Prof Bill Bowring, School of Law, Birkbeck College, University of London – UK
Jane Byrne, Teacher – UK
Robert Caldwell, Assistant Professor of Indigenous Studies, University at Buffalo – USA
Campaign Against Criminalising Communities (CAMPACC) – UK
CND (Campaign Against Nuclear Disarmament) – UK
Margaret Cerullo, Hampshire College – USA
Maggie Cook, UNISON NEC member – UK
Mary Davis FRSA, Visiting Professor of Labour History at Royal Holloway University of London – UK
Defend Kurdistan Initiative – UK
Mary Dibis, Mousawat for Women – Lebanon
Penelope Dimond, Writer and actor – UK
Gorka Elejabarrieta Diaz, Basque Senator, Director EH Bildu International Relations Department – Basque Country
Federal Executive Committee of Women’s Union Courage – Germany
Silvia Federici, Author and Professor Emerita of Social Science, Hofstra University – USA
Andrew Feinstein , Executive Director, Shadow World Investigations – UK
Dr Phil Frampton, Author – UK
Freedom Socialist Party – Australian Section
Freedom Socialist Party – USA Section
Andreas Gavrielidis, Greek-Kurdish Solidarity
Lindsey German, Convenor Stop the War Coalition – UK
Selay Ghaffar, Exiled women’s rights activist from Afghanistan
Prof Barry Gills, Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science – UK
Dr Sarah Glynn, Writer – France
Mustafa Gorer, Kurdish activist – UK
Kirmanj Gundi, KHRO (Kurdistan Human Rights Observer) – UK
Prof Michael Gunter, General Secretary of EU Turkey Civic Commission (EUTCC) – USA
Rahila Gupta, Chair of Southall Black Sisters – UK
Kazhal Hamarashid, Board member of the Toronto Kurdish Community Centre – Canada
Niaz Hamdi, KHRO (Kurdistan Human Rights Observer) – UK
John Hendy QC, Barrister – UK
Nick Hildyard, Policy analyst – UK
Ava Homa, Writer, journalist and activist – Canada/USA
Srecko Horvat, Co-founder of DiEM25 & Progressive International
Dr Stephen Hunt, PiK Ecology Network – UK
John Hunt, Journalist – UK
Alia Hussein, Women’s Affairs Committee of the General Federation of Iraqi Trade Unions – Iraq
Lord Hylton, House of Lords – UK
Serif Isildag, Journalist – UK
Ruken Isik, Adjunct Lecturer at American University – USA
Dafydd Iwan, Former President Plaid Crymru – Wales
Jin Women’s Association – Lebanon
Ramsey Kanaan, Publisher, PM Press – UK
James Kelman, Author – Scotland
Gulay Kilicaslan, Department of Law and Legal Studies, Carleton University – Kanada
Nida Kirmani, Women Democratic Front, Haqooq-e-Khalq Party – Pakistan
Nimat Koko Hamad, Associate researcher and gender specialist – Sudan
Kongra Star Women’s Movement – Rojava & Syria
Claudia Korol, Founder of Popular Education Collective Pañuelos en Rebeldía, Feministas de Abya Yala – Argentina
Balazs Kovacs, Consultant – UK
Kurdish Women’s Relations Office (REPAK) – Kurdistan Region of Iraq
Şeyda Kurt, Journalist and Writer – Germany
Coni Ledesma, International Women’s Alliance (IWA) Europe – Netherlands
Dr Anjila Al-Maamari, Center for Strategic Studies to Support Women and Children – Yemen
Aonghas MacNeacail, Scottish Gaelic poet – Scotland
Fazela Mahomed, Kurdish Human Rights Action Group – South Africa
Saleh Mamon, Campaign Against Criminalising Communities (CAMPACC) – UK
Dr Carol Mann, Director of Women in War – France
Mike Mansfield QC, Barrister – UK
Dr Thomas Jeffrey Miley, Lecturer of Political Sociology, Fellow of Darwin College, University of Cambridge – UK
Zahraa Mohamad, Journalist – Lebanon
Francie Molloy, MP for Mid Ulster – Ireland
David Morgan, Journalist – UK
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb, Green Party Member of the House of Lords – UK
Maryam Namazie, Human rights activist, commentator, and broadcaster – UK
Dr Marie Nassif-Debs, President of Association Equality-Wardah Boutros – Lebanon
Doug Nicholls, General Secretary, General Federation of Trade Unions – UK
Margaret Owen, O.B.E., President Widows for Peace through Democracy – UK
Prof Felix Padel, Research associate at Center for World Environmental History, University of Sussex – UK
Sarah Parker, Anti-Capitalist Resistance – UK
Patriotic Democratic Socialist Party (PPDS) – Tunisia
Peace in Kurdistan Campaign – UK
Maxine Peake, Actress – UK
Rosalind Petchesky, Distinguished Professor Emerita of Political Science, Hunter College & the Graduate Center, City University of New York – USA
Dr Thomas Phillips, lecturer in law at Liverpool John Moore University – UK
Eleonora Gea Piccardi, University of Coimbra, PhD candidate – Italy
Ulisse Pizzi, Geologist, UK engineering consultancy – UK
Dr Anni Pues, International human rights lawyer – UK
Radical Women – USA
Radical Women – Australia
Bill Ramsay, Ex-President Educational Institute of Scotland and Convenor of Scottish National Party – Scotland
Ismat Raza Shahjahan, President of Women Democratic Front – Pakistan
Trevor Rayne, Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! – UK
Gawriyah Riyah Cude, Women’s Trade Union Forum – Iraq
Dimitri Roussopoulos, Writer, editor, publisher, political activist – Canada
Nighat Said Khan, Women Democratic Front, Women Action Forum WAF – Pakistan
Dr Michael Schiffmann, Linguist, English Department of the University of Heidelberg, Translator – Germany
Paul Scholey, Morrish Solicitors – UK
Bert Schouwenburg, International Trade Union Advisor – UK
Chris Scurfield, Political activist – UK
Stephen Smellie, Deputy Convenor UNISON Scotland and NEC member – Scotland
Geoff Shears, Vice-Chair of the Centre for Labour and Social Studies(CLASS) – UK
Tony Shephard, Musician and graphic designer – UK
Tony Simpson, Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation – UK
Radha D’Souza, Professor of law at the University of Westminster – UK
Oskar Spong, Operator – UK
Chris Stephens MP, Glasgow South West – Scotland
Steve Sweeney, International Editor, Morning Star – UK
Tooba Syed, Women Democratic Front – Pakistan
Greta Sykes, Writer and artist – UK
Tim Symonds, Novelist – UK
Joly Talukder, General Secretary of the Bangladesh Garment Workers Trade Union Centre – Bangladesh
Latifa Taamalah Women’s Committee – Tunisia
Shavanah Taj, General Secretary Wales TUC – Wales
Lisa-Marie Taylor, CEO of FiLiA – UK
Saadia Toor, Women Democratic Front – Pakistan
Tom Unterrainer, Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation – UK
Prof Abbas Vali, Professor of Modern Social and Political Theory – UK
Dr Federico Venturini, University of Udine – Italy
Andy Walsh, Chair, Greater Manchester Law Centre – UK
Julie Ward, Former MEP – UK
Arthur West, Secretary, Kilmarnock and Loudon Trades Union Council – Scotland
Prof Kariane Westrheim, Chair of EU Turkey Civic Commission (EUTCC) – Norway
Alex Wilson, PhD student at York University in Toronto, Ontario – Canada
Dr Fiona Woods, Lecturer, Technological University Shannon – Ireland
Paula Yacoubian, Member of Parliament – Lebanon
Rosy Zúñiga, Latin America and Caribbean Popular Education Council CEAAL – Mexico

The Non-Human Costs of War

by DGR News Service | Mar 18, 2022 | ANALYSIS

Editor’s Note: Industrial civilization is not a path to lasting peace and prosperity. By undermining the foundations of life on this planet, industrial society is creating unimaginable wealth for a small portion of people while creating a wasteland. This will not last. As Richard Heinberg has said, “The Party is Over.”

If this is indeed a party, it’s a ball on the deck of a slave ship—a hierarchical party in which amusement rides are built with planks from the hull. The party will only end when the whole ship sinks and everyone—slave and master alike—dies. Ecologically, industrial civilization amounts to this: a murder-suicide, bacchanalia purchased with the coin of atrocities.

For this article, we bring you two voices—Lierre Keith and Will Falk—on the ecological costs of war, and the war on the natural world.

The Non-Human Costs of War

Carbon emissions and fuel consumption (In 2018, the U.S. Defense Department purchased more than 3.5 billion gallons of fossil fuels).
Use of depleted uranium ammunition, defoliant herbicides, and other toxic substances.
Weapons testing that destroys habitat directly (for example, bombing ranges) or harms wildlife (for example, military sonar testing that kills marine mammals).
Pollution associated with military installations (more than 5,440 toxic sites inside the U.S. alone).
Nuclear weapons production, testing, and waste.

Lierre Keith: The War Against the Planet

In my lifetime, the earth has lost half her wildlife. Every day, two hundred species slip into that longest night of extinction. “Ocean” is synonymous with the words abundance and plenty. Fullness is on the list, as well as infinity. And by 2048, the oceans will be empty of fish. Crustaceans are experiencing “complete reproductive failure.” In plain terms, their babies are dying. Plankton are also disappearing. Maybe plankton are too small and green for anyone to care about, but know this: two out of three animal breaths are made possible by the oxygen plankton produce. If the oceans go down, we go down with them.

How could it be otherwise? See the pattern, not just the facts. There were so many bison on the Great Plains, you could sit and watch for days as a herd thundered by. In the central valley of California, the flocks of waterbirds were so thick they blocked out the sun. One-quarter of Indiana was a wetland, lush with life and the promise of more. Now it’s a desert of corn. Where I live in the pacific northwest, ten million fish have been reduced to ten thousand. People would hear them coming for a whole day. This is not a story: there are people alive who remember it. And I have never once heard the sound that water makes when forty million years of persistence finds it way home. Am I allowed to use the word “apocalypse” yet?

The necrophiliac insists we are mechanical components, that rivers are an engineering project, and genes can be sliced up and arranged at whim. He believes we are all machines, despite the obvious: a machine can be taken apart and put back together. A living being can’t. May I add: neither can a living planet.

Understand where the war against the world began. In seven places around the globe, humans took up the activity called agriculture. In very brute terms, you take a piece of land, you clear every living thing off it, and then you plant it to human use. Instead of sharing that land with the other million creatures who need to live there, you’re only growing humans on it. It’s biotic cleansing. The human population grows to huge numbers; everyone else is driven into extinction.

Agriculture creates a way of life called civilization. Civilization means people living in cities. What that means is: they need more than the land can give. Food, water, energy have to come from someplace else. It doesn’t matter what lovely, peaceful values people hold in their hearts. The society is dependent on imperialism and genocide. Because no one willing gives up their land, their water, their trees. But since the city has used up its own, it has to go out and get those from somewhere else. That’s the last 10,000 years in a few sentences.

The end of every civilization is written into the beginning. Agriculture destroys the world. That’s not agriculture on a bad day. That’s what agriculture is. You pull down the forest, you plow up the prairie, you drain the wetland. Especially, you destroy the soil. Civilizations last between 800 and maybe 2,000 years—they last until the soil gives out.

What could be more sadistic then control of entire continents? He turns mountains into rubble, and rivers must do as they are told. The basic unit of life is violated with genetic engineering. The basic unit of matter as well, to make bombs that kill millions. This is his passion, turning the living into the dead. It’s not just individual deaths and not even the deaths of species. The process of life itself is now under assault and it is losing badly. Vertebrate evolution has long since come to a halt—there isn’t enough habitat left. There are areas in China where there are no flowering plants. Why? Because the pollinators are all dead. That’s five hundred million years of evolution: gone.

He wants it all dead. That’s his biggest thrill and the only way he can control it. According to him it was never alive. There is no self-willed community, no truly wild land. It’s all inanimate components he can arrange to this liking, a garden he can manage. Never mind that every land so managed has been lessened into desert. The essential integrity of life has been breached, and now he claims it never existed. He can do whatever he wants. And no one stops him.

Can we stop him?

I say yes, but then I have no intention of giving up. The facts as they stand are unbearable, but it’s only in facing them that pattern comes clear. Civilization is based on drawdown. It props itself up with imperialism, conquering its neighbors and stripping their land, but eventually even the colonies wear out. Fossil fuel has been an accelerant, as has capitalism, but the underlying problem is much bigger than either. Civilization requires agriculture, and agriculture is a war against the living world. Whatever good was in the culture before, ten thousand years of that war has turned it necrotic.

Lierre Keith: The Girls and the Grasses

Will Falk: An Armistice With the Natural World

The news about war in Ukraine causes me to think about how some human cultures have waged a war on the natural world for millennia. War begins with a willingness to exploit the natural world. And, no actually, war is not as old as humanity. Conflict, yes. Violence, too. Sometimes atrocious violence. But, not large scale mobilizations of a population, with professional killers, to invade and permanently dominate distant lands. When you live in balance with your own land base, you don’t need to steal resources from somewhere else.

The horrifying truth is: Human populations have so thoroughly exceeded the planet’s carrying capacity that the so-called resources humans exploit to support the population overshoot are being depleted. When those resources are no longer available, human populations will collapse and humans will suffer on a scale we’ve never seen. Currently, the dominant culture is just imposing that suffering on the rest of life.

There’s no way out of this mess without extreme suffering. We can voluntarily dismantle the dominant culture that is based in destroying the natural world for the benefit of some humans. This dismantling will be incredibly painful if we are truly going to honor the rest of the natural world’s ability to survive and thrive. If we don’t dismantle the dominant culture, these resource wars are only going to intensify, more places like Ukraine will be plunged into brutal wars, and it just becomes ever-more likely that some humans will choose to use the technologies we now possess to seriously threaten Earth’s ability to support life in the future.

And no, I am not advocating for killing people off. I am, however, insisting that we recognize the suffering the dominant culture causes the countless other beings we share this battered, but still beautiful planet with. I am insisting that we recognize that procrastinating on the very difficult changes we need to make in the name of preserving the dominant culture just pushes the problem on to the natural world and the much more populous, vulnerable, future generations of humans.

If we want to build a world without war, then the first armistice we need to sign is with the natural world.

Image: public domain.

The Ukraine War: What Caused It and How to End It

by DGR News Service | Mar 7, 2022 | NEWS

Editor’s note: In the chess match that is imperial politics, entire nations and ecosystems are pawns that are bargained with and sacrificed. As war tears across Ukraine, we insist that neither the U.S. nor NATO or Russia is innocent. The dire truth is that empires produce wars, and thus the path towards peace ultimately means dismantling empires.

By Richard Rubenstein

Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine is undoubtedly illegal and immoral. From the point of view of Russian interests, it is also likely to prove a costly mistake. The primary question now, however, is what to do about this, and the answers presented thus far by those outraged by the invasion are dangerously counterproductive.

“Putin must be punished,” the Americans and Europeans insist. But the forms of punishment now being implemented – severe economic sanctions and military aid to Ukraine – are designed to prolong the military struggle and to cripple the Russian economy, apparently on the theory that Russia’s discontented masses and oligarchs will then replace Putin with a leader more to the West’s liking. Pardon me, but this makes little sense. Prolonging the conflict will kill more Ukrainians and Russians, inspire their compatriots and loved ones to seek revenge. It may also bring the world close to nuclear war. Moreover, making a whole people suffer usually unites them against their adversary rather than turning them against their leader.

The array of punishments administered and proposed also indicate that many Westerners consider Putin analogous to Adolf Hitler and a return to the negotiating table the equivalent of Munich-style appeasement. But this betrays a profound misunderstanding of what drives the conflict and who the conflicting parties really are. Vladimir Putin is not an evil mastermind bent on world domination and the genocidal destruction of “inferior” races. He is the brutal leader of a once great empire playing the imperial game in a world of competitive empires. More brutal than Harry Truman in Korea, Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam, or George W. Bush in Iraq? Obviously not. Then why consider his bad character the primary cause of the struggle?

One reason seems clear. As conflict analysts recognize, it is common for each side in a violent struggle to consider the opponent’s malice and cruelty to be the conflict’s sole cause. “They are evil aggressors who choose to fight. We are virtuous defenders who fight because we have to.” This is exactly how the editors of the New York Times describe the war in Ukraine. They put it like this:

. . . none of the pretexts for war that Mr. Putin churned out in recent days and weeks contained much truth or any justification whatsoever for waging war on a weaker neighbor. This is a war of choice for all the wrong reasons, and Mr. Putin and his coterie are solely and fully responsible for every drop of Ukrainian – and Russian – blood, for every livelihood destroyed and for all the economic pain engendered by the conflict.[1]

I suppose that half a truth is better than no truth at all, and this is precisely half the truth. Putin did invade Ukraine without being militarily attacked. Some of the reasons for war he offered (for example, the alleged non-existence of a Ukrainian nationality) were fabrications. Other reasons, such as the U.S./European refusal to halt the expansion of NATO, were quite true, but they do not justify bombing and killing innocent people.

Where the Times editorial goes off the tracks, however, is in asserting that the Russian leaders are “solely and fully” responsible for the violence engulfing Ukraine. In fact, they are one of the responsible parties, but only one. The causes of this struggle go far beyond Mr. Putin’s bad choices, and solving the problems that produced the conflict go far beyond punishing the Russians. The causes of this conflict are systemic, which means that others in addition to Putin and his cohorts must share responsibility for the current violence.

“Systemic” means that there is a system – a form of social organization supported by patterns of thought, speech, and behavior – that structures the relations between states and peoples involved in conflict. The word that best describes our current system is imperial. Four major empires currently compete for regional hegemony and global superiority. In order of economic and military power, they are the multinational blocs dominated by the United States, China, Europe, and Russia. Several up-and-coming regional powers like Turkey and Iran have also asserted their influence in imperial style, but the major players in the Ukraine crisis are the U.S., Europe, and Russia, with China a potential participant.

The eruption of violence in this case should not have come as a surprise. Imperial systems produce violent conflict as a regular product of their operations. Often, subject peoples rebel, inciting imperial leaders to repress the dissidents, and enticing competing empires to come to their support. Often, empires challenge each other’s right to rule, particularly in disputed boundary areas – a form of competition that has produced both proxy wars and world wars. Ukraine is a prize in the competition between the American empire, assisted by its European junior partner, and Russia, morally supported by its Chinese ally. There are many historical analogies to this situation, some of them quite frightening. For example, the competition over independence-seeking Serbia between the Austro-Hungarian empire, supported by imperial Germany, and the Russian empire, supported by Great Britain and France, led directly to World War I.

Of course, empires do not always assert their interests by going to war. Negotiations can be used to settle their disputes at least temporarily, even if the system as a whole tends to generate mass violence. The current tragedy befalling Ukraine was avoidable, but avoiding it required more than patience or a change of heart by Mr. Putin. The invasion could almost certainly have been averted if the Americans and Europeans had agreed to stop expanding NATO and to treat Ukraine as a neutral buffer state, as they did after World War II in the cases of Austria and Finland. As in those cases, Ukraine’s rights to autonomy in certain spheres (e.g., economic decision-making) could have been recognized while restricting its right to become a military ally of either empire. But there is no evidence that the Western powers took the Russian demands seriously enough to entertain any such proposal.

Why not? On Putin’s watch NATO doubled its size, established army and air bases throughout Eastern Europe, and created two “super-bases” including missile facilities in Poland and Romania. Meanwhile, the U.S. continued to maintain more than 800 military bases around the globe and to modernize its nuclear facilities with the aim of threatening (or “deterring”) its Russian and Chinese competitors. The rationale for this aggressive posture was the adversary’s alleged tendency to aggress – a classic piece of circular conflict reasoning. In 2013, Ukraine’s elected leader supported a move to link his nation more closely with Russia than with Europe. In response, an uprising backed by the West overthrew him and installed a pro-Western regime in Kyiv. Russia responded to this apparent aggression by seizing Crimea, a former Russian territory inhabited by Russian-speakers, and by supporting separatists in the Donbass region. This alleged aggression then became a reason for Ukrainian and Western leaders to intensify their campaign to bring Ukraine into the Western orbit.

All this was part of a larger pattern of conflict between empires. What Putin had been demanding for years was an end to the post-Cold War system that treated Russia as a defeated but hostile power forbidden to assert its own security concerns and to increase its influence in the world. In 2019, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, hardly a pro-Russian organization, summarized this policy accurately:

U.S. policy toward Russia since the end of the Cold War is a story of different administrations pursuing essentially the same set of policies. Two aspects stand out as major irritants in the bilateral relationship: a refusal to accept Russia as it is, as evidenced by repeated initiatives to reform and remake its political system; and the extension of the Euro-Atlantic security architecture into the Eurasian space surrounding Russia. Both of these highly ambitious pursuits have been attempted repeatedly and unsuccessfully, yet both continue to be cornerstones of official U.S. policy toward Russia. In retrospect, it is hard to escape the conclusion that a less ambitious U.S. approach to dealing with Russia and the states of the former Soviet Union could have established a better basis for a less rocky U.S.-Russian relationship.[2] (Emphasis added)

What the Carnegie analysis did not recognize, however, was that this is how empires customarily operate. If they do not entirely erase their enemies, as the Romans did to Carthage, or remake their societies from the ground up, as the U.S. did to the Axis powers after World War II, they treat them as political and military adversaries that must be kept weak and dependent. Unsurprisingly, those subject to such restrictions and humiliations resent their subordination, dream of restoring lost glory, and insist on holding fast to what remains of a diminished empire. Untrusted and scorned by their victors, they return that distrust and view the weapons pointed at them as intolerable existential threats.

For this reason, Vladimir Putin’s cruelly mistaken decision to invade Ukraine was not only the result of the Russian leader’s hubris and insecurity. It was also the result of a desperation created by the hubris and insecurity of the Western empires. To ignore that conflict’s deeply structural nature is to take sides in a game of “blame the evil enemy” that attributes violence to a leader’s bad character rather than holding the imperial system itself responsible. Moreover, it impoverishes our understanding of the conflict by simplifying the narrative to the point that the only relevant issue seems to be Ukraine’s right to self-determination. In a world dominated by competing empires, movements for national self-determination frequently trigger violent conflicts – and sometimes world wars.

What can be done in this case to head off an increasingly destructive and dangerous escalation of the conflict? The immediate answer is to continue the peace negotiations now taking place between Russia and Ukraine. Despite propagandistic depictions of the Russians as engaged in an all-out war to kill civilians and destroy Ukrainian society, their relatively slow and discriminating advance, at this point without air support, suggests a continuing willingness to negotiate a solution that does not require either “shock and awe” military tactics or occupation of the country. If these negotiations do achieve a cease-fire, the next step will be to convene a peace conference that could reconsider Russia’s original demands, as well as dealing with the new fears and concerns created by the war itself.

This sort of negotiation is clearly preferable to continued escalation, but one must recognize that, in a world still dominated by competing empires, power-based negotiations are unlikely to resolve conflicts sustainably. The imperial system itself, linked to an elite-driven, predatory capitalism and militarism, desperately needs to be transformed. Popular movements to dismantle the empires and to create a more democratic and peaceful world order are the only real alternative to a competition that is likely to end in nuclear war.

To some, this hope may seem like “pie in the sky,” but there is far more support for anti-imperial, pro-human mobilizations than you may think. To stop demonizing leaders and shine the full light of criticism on the empires could be a first step toward unleashing this potential.

Notes.

[1] “Mr.Putin Launches a Sequel to the Cold War,” New York Times, February 24, 2022.

[2] https://carnegieendowment.org/2019/06/20/thirty-years-of-u.s.-policy-toward-russia-can-vicious-circle-be-broken-pub-79323

Rich Rubenstein was educated at Harvard College (B.A. 1959), Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar (M.A. 1961), and Harvard Law School (J.D. 1963). Before joining the George Mason faculty in 1987, he practiced law in Washington, D.C., taught political science at Roosevelt University in Chicago, and was professor of law at the Antioch School of Law. He is the author of eight books, including REBELS IN EDEN (1970), ALCHEMISTS OF REVOLUTION: TERRORISM IN THE MODERN WORLD (1985), and three books about religious conflict: WHEN JESUS BECAME GOD (1999), ARISTOTLE’S CHILDREN (2003), and THUS SAITH THE LORD: THE REVOLUTIONARY MORAL VISION OF ISAIAH AND JEREMIAH (2006).

Rich is an expert on American foreign policy, religious conflict, terrorism, and methods of resolving serious international and domestic disputes. He teaches courses at ICAR on Critical Conflict Theory, Religion and Conflict, Popular Narratives of War and Peace, Political Violence, and other subjects. He has lectured throughout the U.S.A. and Europe on topics ranging from the philosophy and practice of conflict resolution to the war on terrorism and current conflicts in the Middle East, and has appeared on numerous radio and television shows and in filmed documentaries discussing these issues. He is a frequent speaker at churches, synagogues, mosques, and religious seminaries, as well as universities and NGOs. He currently lives in Washington, D.C.

Image Courtesy: www.kremlin.ru, Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported | Wikimedia Commons.

Chris Hedges: Why is There War in Ukraine?

by DGR News Service | Feb 26, 2022 | ANALYSIS

Editor’s note: Proxy war and geopolitical jockeying are innate to superpower politics. The war in Ukraine is the direct result of NATO working to, in the words of Noam Chomsky, “control global energy systems, pipelines, and sea lanes,” and of Russia working to expand its imperial influence.

The prize is Ukraine: a wealthy country with massive reserves of oil and gas, minerals, and the most valuable agricultural land in Europe. Ukraine has been a trophy of empires for centuries. To imperialists, land is to be seized and controlled, not revered and respected. For more on the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, which dates back decades, check out this Green Flame episode from 2020 with Ukrainian-American anti-war activist Sergio Kochergin:

Putin is using the same playbook the United States has used for many years: claiming to be fighting for freedom and self-determination. And he, like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Obama, Trump, and Joe Biden, is a war criminal.

Now, as Russian protesters are thrown in jail and the U.S. warhawks beat the drums of intervention, the Ukrainian and Russian people and the whole planet will pay the price, and the threat of nuclear war hovers over the world once again. If NATO joins battle with Russia, nuclear strikes become a distinct possibility. The U.S. and Russian militaries have, between them, more than 10,000 nuclear weapons. The strategic doctrine of both call for nuclear options if a conventional war is going poorly.

Finally, we must note that death and destruction is not abnormal within civilization. Forty percent of all human deaths are premature and caused by pollution. Tens of millions die each year due to cars, global warming, mass starvation, and diseases of civilization. War is hell. Modern industrial civilization, dominated by capitalism and patriarchy, is itself a war on women, on the poor, on the planet, and on the future.

Aggressive wars, whether they are waged on nations or on the planet, and whether the weapons are bombs, politics, or bulldozers, are deplorable.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, there was a near universal understanding among political leaders that NATO expansion would be a foolish provocation against Russia. How naive we were to think the military-industrial complex would allow such sanity to prevail.

by Chris Hedges / Counterpunch

I was in Eastern Europe in 1989 reporting on the revolutions that overthrew the ossified communist dictatorships that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was a time of hope. NATO, with the breakup of the Soviet empire, became obsolete. President Mikhail Gorbachev reached out to Washington and Europe to build a new security pact that would include Russia. Secretary of State James Baker in the Reagan administration, along with the West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, assured the Soviet leader that if Germany was unified NATO would not be extended beyond the new borders. The commitment not to expand NATO, also made by Great Britain and France, appeared to herald a new global order. We saw the peace dividend dangled before us, the promise that the massive expenditures on weapons that characterized the Cold War would be converted into expenditures on social programs and infrastructures that had long been neglected to feed the insatiable appetite of the military.

There was a near universal understanding among diplomats and political leaders at the time that any attempt to expand NATO was foolish, an unwarranted provocation against Russia that would obliterate the ties and bonds that happily emerged at the end of the Cold War.

How naive we were. The war industry did not intend to shrink its power or its profits. It set out almost immediately to recruit the former Communist Bloc countries into the European Union and NATO. Countries that joined NATO, which now include Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia were forced to reconfigure their militaries, often through hefty loans, to become compatible with NATO military hardware.

There would be no peace dividend. The expansion of NATO swiftly became a multi-billion-dollar bonanza for the corporations that had profited from the Cold War. Poland, for example, just agreed to spend $ 6 billion on M1 Abrams tanks and other U.S. military equipment. If Russia would not acquiesce to again being the enemy, then Russia would be pressured into becoming the enemy. And here we are. On the brink of another Cold War, one from which only the war industry will profit while, as W. H. Auden wrote, the little children die in the streets.

The consequences of pushing NATO up to the borders with Russia — there is now a NATO missile base in Poland 100 miles from the Russian border — were well known to policy makers. Yet they did it anyway. It made no geopolitical sense. But it made commercial sense. War, after all, is a business, a very lucrative one. It is why we spent two decades in Afghanistan although there was near universal consensus after a few years of fruitless fighting that we had waded into a quagmire we could never win.

In a classified diplomatic cable obtained and released by WikiLeaks dated February 1, 2008, written from Moscow, and addressed to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, NATO-European Union Cooperative, National Security Council, Russia Moscow Political Collective, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State there was an unequivocal understanding that expanding NATO risked an eventual conflict with Russia, especially over the Ukraine.

“Not only does Russia perceive encirclement [by NATO], and efforts to undermine Russia’s influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests,” the cable reads. “Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face. . . . Dmitri Trenin, Deputy Director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, expressed concern that Ukraine was, in the long-term, the most potentially destabilizing factor in U.S.-Russian relations, given the level of emotion and neuralgia triggered by its quest for NATO membership . . . Because membership remained divisive in Ukrainian domestic politics, it created an opening for Russian intervention. Trenin expressed concern that elements within the Russian establishment would be encouraged to meddle, stimulating U.S. overt encouragement of opposing political forces, and leaving the U.S. and Russia in a classic confrontational posture.”

The Obama administration, not wanting to further inflame tensions with Russia, blocked arms sales to Kiev. But this act of prudence was abandoned by the Trump and Biden administrations. Weapons from the U.S. and Great Britain are pouring into the Ukraine, part of the $1.5 billion in promised military aid. The equipment includes hundreds of sophisticated Javelins and NLAW anti-tank weapons despite repeated protests by Moscow.

The United States and its NATO allies have no intention of sending troops to the Ukraine. Rather, they will flood the country with weapons, which is what it did in the 2008 conflict between Russia and Georgia.

The conflict in the Ukraine echoes the novel “Chronicle of a Death Foretold” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. In the novel it is acknowledged by the narrator that “there had never been a death more foretold” and yet no one was able or willing to stop it. All of us who reported from the Eastern Europe in 1989 knew the consequences of provoking Russia, and yet few have raised their voices to halt the madness. The methodical steps towards war took on a life of their own, moving us like sleepwalkers towards disaster.

Once NATO expanded into Eastern Europe the Clinton administration promised Moscow that NATO combat troops would not be stationed in Eastern Europe, the defining issue of the NATO-Russia Founding Act on Mutual Relations. This promise again turned out to be a lie. Then in 2014 the U.S. backed a coup against the Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych who sought to build an economic alliance with Russia rather than the European Union. Of course, once integrated into the European Union, as seen in the rest of Eastern Europe, the next step is integration into NATO. Russia, spooked by the coup, alarmed at the overtures by the EU and NATO, then annexed Crimea, largely populated by Russian speakers. And the death spiral that led us to the conflict currently underway in the Ukraine became unstoppable.

The war state needs enemies to sustain itself. When an enemy can’t be found an enemy is manufactured. Putin has become, in the words of Senator Angus King, the new Hitler, out to grab the Ukraine and the rest of Eastern Europe. The full-throated cries for war, echoed shamelessly by the press, are justified by draining the conflict of historical context, by elevating ourselves as the saviors and whoever we oppose, from Saddam Hussein to Putin, as the new Nazi leader.

I don’t know where this will end up. We must remember, as Putin reminded us, that Russia is a nuclear power. We must remember that once you open the Pandora’s box of war it unleashes dark and murderous forces no one can control. I know this from personal experience. The match has been lit. The tragedy is that there was never any dispute about how the conflagration would start.

This first appeared on ScheerPost.

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. His books include American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, Death of the Liberal Class, and War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning and Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, a collaboration with comics artist and journalist Joe Sacco.

Photo by Kevin Schmid on Unsplash

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