It is daunting to follow Alexandra Bell. Bob and Ed have given me plenty of time to share my thinking with you, but most of you don’t know that they are gamblers. They gave me no marching order, so we’ll all see what you get! I’ll cover a range of issues within an appreciation of Gramsci’s warning that “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”
I’ll do my best to name and shame some of those monsters and in the end offer a little hope. My talk is organized around six themes: News is What Your Friends Tell You, Nuclear Dangers, New Cold War with China where I’ll go into greater depth given our movement’s difficulty in engaging Indo-Pacific dynamics. Then on to what might be familiar as I focus on the Stupids in Charge, Confronting the Counterrevolution, and Some Way Out of Here.
I hate to say it, but I am old. So while preparing my talk, I remembered what an aide to Martin Luther King, told me on the eve of the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign. This was after King had been stymied by Northern racism in Chicago. and his leadership was being challenged by Malcolm X and Stokley Charmichael, and no one in Congress had introduced legislation that could be a focal point for the
I had asked the aide how the campaign could succeed without a legislative handle. I was told that “When your team is behind, it’s the bottom of the ninth inning, there are two outs, and you’re at bat, you just give it all that you have.” That seems about right for the challenges we face…
I had asked the aide how the campaign could succeed without a legislative handle. I was told that “When your team is behind, it’s the bottom of the ninth inning, there are two outs, and you’re at bat, you just give it all that you have.” That seems about right for the challenges we face, but I take hope from the election victories two weeks ago, from our massive No Kings mobilizations, and from people across the country who are protecting innocent immigrants.
I also know that Margaret Mead was right when she wrote “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world, indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” We learned that from college students who challenged racial segregation by sitting in at a North Carolina lunch counter and from the nuclear weapons freeze movement which was launched by several very small groups.
News Is What Your Friends Tell You
Another lesson that I took from the Poor People’s Campaign came in a speech by the Revered Jim Bevel, “News,” he said, “is what your friends tell you.” Two weeks ago I was in Spain for meetings of the International Peace Bureau with movement leaders from the U.S., Europe, and the Global South. It was, truth to tell a relief to be out of the country, if only briefly.
Spaniards and our international allies have sympathy for us as we press against an impending dictatorship. From banners hanging from people’s apartment windows, to reports of Spain’s partial embargo on weapons sales to Israel, and graffiti on so many walls, Spanish support for Palestinian rights and opposition to Israeli genocide and apartheid were inspiring. IPB leaders from South Africa to South Korea oppose Putin’s war in Ukraine and support a ceasefire and peace negotiations. Yet, across Europe there is fear of what Putin’s ambitions may be, and those fears fuel a massive European campaign of remilitarization, both within and independent of NATO. The old order is past, and with 3.5 or 5 % military spending, depending on how you count it, the envisioned warfare states signal an end to welfare states. That will dictate economic pain and provide openings for hard right forces who are on the offensive across Europe. A continent-wide coalition Stop/EuroArms is mobilizing to resist those spending increases.
There was actually more outrage within peace movement circles at Trump’s smash and grab imperial ambitions from Venezuela to Greenland, and Gaza to Panama. I have long been critical of Maduro’s dictatorship, but how do you find meaningful words to Venezuelans whose families lie in the balance beyond saying that we are organizing to prevent an invasion? On a happier note, I received more than a few thumbs up and smiles for my “Canada is Not for Sale” hat!
Returning to Rev. Bevel’s reference to news and friends, shortly before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, I was surprised to be invited to join a confidential track II process with former senior Russian, European and U.S. arms control diplomats, generals, and analysts. I have learned a lot from these people whose first assumptions differ so much from mine. After Trump’s reelection, a senior Russian asked how deeply would it change the United States. Would it be equal to the Civil War, to the end of Reconstruction, to the New Deal, or to the Civil Rights revolution? There was no easy answer then, but in response to a question about Trump’s foreign policy priorities, a former senior US diplomat responded that Trump’s first, second, and third priorities would be doing all that he could to increase his and his family’s wealth.
He was right. In addition to the priority being given to Gestapo-like police imprisonment and deportations of immigrants – even children, to the new Cold War with China, and to Trump’s imperial ambitions, we’ve had Qatar’s blatant Boeing 747 bribe. And we can read, an estimated $800 million has been forked over to Trump and his family via secret bitcoin purchases. It comes, we must assume, from monarchs, dictators, the world’s plutocrats, as well as from cronies and who convicts seek pardons.
Nuclear Dangers
Tragically, we have a president who is less prepared to deal with nuclear dangers than the president portrayed in the new film The House of Dynamite, Trump’s uninformed and garbled statement about resuming nuclear testing was the focus of discussion in our last track II session. There are deep concerns that Trump may have sounded the starting gun for an existentially dangerous nuclear arms race by both nuclear and currently non-nuclear nations.
There was something of a consensus that Trump misunderstood reports about recent Russian activities. The claim is that either Russia or China conducted explosive, not subcritical, tests, a claim rejected by the head of the U.S. Strategic Command. Insecure, and not wanting to be one upped by Putin, Trump issued his threat. When questioned, Trump doubled down on the threat, causing great uncertainty, confusion, and leading the Kremlin to request clarification about US nuclear weapons testing policy. And remember, this brouhaha comes when significant Republican forces advocate renewed testing. The Kremlin has yet to receive that clarification nor another one in response to Putin’s offer to extend the most essential elements of the New START Treaty beyond its February expiration date.
Among the arms controllers in that track II session, there is an understanding that if the US or Russia resume testing, it will open the gates for extremely dangerous nuclear weapons proliferation. Among the candidates for a breakout is South Korea, where most citizens want their nation to develop nuclear weapons out of fear of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and growing uncertainties about the military alliance with the U.S. Other breakout candidates include Saudi Arabia, which recently concluded a military alliance with nuclear Pakistan, and Iran whose nuclear program was anything but obliterated.
Russia is reported to be in a position to resume explosive nuclear weapons testing in relatively short order. But this is not the case for the U.S. The Pentagon could detonate a nuclear weapon as a show of terrorizing force, but it will take 18 to 36 months to install highly advanced nuclear testing
Despite the Treaty’s double standards and failure to lead to the elimination of the world’s nuclear arsenals, that Treaty remains a critical barrier to nuclear weapons proliferation.
Trump’s threat needs to be understood in its broader context. The seminally important Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which has limited nuclear weapons proliferation and thus the dangers of nuclear war, will be at risk if Trump persists with his testing threat. With the exception of North Korea, nuclear powers have respected the moratorium on testing since the Comprehensive Test Ban was negotiated 30 some years ago. Fears abound that if Trump refuses to reverse course before NPT Review Conference in late April, he could torpedo the Treaty. Despite the Treaty’s double standards and failure to lead to the elimination of the world’s nuclear arsenals, that Treaty remains a critical barrier to nuclear weapons proliferation. With the last two Review Conferences deemed failures for their inability to agree on a final declaration, it is feared that a commitment to resume nuclear weapons testing would sink the third RevCon.
In the tradition of three strikes and you’re out, a third successive NPT Review Conference failure could doom the NPT, if not immediately then gradually as states withdraw from the treaty, begin their own testing, and become nuclear weapons states, thereby increasing the dangers of nuclear weapons use.
We have to hope that there are sufficient wisdom and leverage hidden in Trump Administration niches to convince him to reverse course. Senator Markey and Representative Titus have introduced legislation to do just that. We can use their bills to name, shame, and insist on no resumption of nuclear weapons testing. Let me add that even underground nuclear weapons testing, given radioactive venting, is anything but safe. And with the NPT Review Conference approaching, we can organize to insist that the Treaty’s commitment to nuclear weapons abolition and previous agreements be respected.
I am now working with US and international nuclear weapons abolitionists, including Nihon Hidankyo which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year, to organize our presence, a conference, and street actions when the Review Conference begins.
We can also remind people that even as we are enter into and resist a new US-Russia-China Cold War, agreements between great power rivals are still possible. That was the case with arms control negotiations during the first Cold War. We should urge the US to join with Russia to extend the elements of the New START Treaty beyond the Treaty’s February expiration.
To reduce the nuclear dangers, we also need to recognize that the Ukraine War has been about more than Moscow’s resistance to Ukraine joining NATO, an option that was NOT on the table in February 2022. In significant measure, the invasion resulted from arrogance of power in both Moscow and Washington and from an absence of U.S. Strategic empathy. As George Kennan and Fiona Hill warned Clinton and Bush the Lesser, the inability to appreciate that given the histories of Napoleon’s, the Kaiser’s, and Hitler’s invasions from the West, the deploying NATO forces to Moscow’s borders could well lead to a military response to offset the perceived Western threat.
Even without Ukraine in NATO, with Poland, the Baltic states long ago Norway in the alliance, its forces were already along Russia’s border. And as a result of the war, the NATO-Russian front has doubled in size with Finland and Sweden abandoning their legacies of neutrality and joining the alliance.
The war is also about recreating Europe’s strategic architecture. We forget that Moscow’s January 2022 proposal to the West called for rolling back former Soviet Republics memberships in NATO. But remember too that Europe’s immediate Post Cold War geopolitical order was based on Common Security, commitments not to augment military power that threatens the security of other nations.. Recall, among others the Paris Charter and the NATO-Russia Founding Act.
New Cold War With China
Turning to the new Cold War with China, our time is marked by the inherent tensions between rising and declining powers that have often resulted in catastrophic wars. The U.S.-China trade war undermines both nations’ economies and jeopardizes their peoples’ and world security. And, military accidents and miscalculations do happen, and can trigger a calamitous wars.
…we now live with the possibility of U.S.-Chinese Mutually Assured Economic Destruction as well as Mutual Assured Nuclear Destruction.
As we were reminded last month, we now live with the possibility of U.S.-Chinese Mutually Assured Economic Destruction as well as Mutual Assured Nuclear Destruction. Before the fragile Trump-Xi temporary trade truce negotiated several weeks ago, each side demonstrated its stranglehold on the other’s economy. China mines 70% of the world’s rare earths and refines 90% of them. These minerals are essential for producing cell phones, computers, fighter jets, nuclear submarines, Predator drones, Tomahawk missiles, and more. [i] Without them, the U.S. and world economy would grind to a halt, and the Pentagon would howl with fury at its inability to build and deploy new advanced weapons.
But access to the U.S. market also remains essential for Beijing’s export economy, and thus Chinese political stability. The Trump Commerce Department’s ill-conceived additional technology export controls aimed at China in early October led to Xi’s threat of a total ban on rare earth exports. Trump then compounded the crisis that he had created by announcing an additional 100% tariffs on China. Facing the economic abyss, at their Seoul summit Trump defused the crisis he had created with both countries by agreeing to what will likely be a temporary economic ceasefire.
Friends, this is not a contest that the U.S. is going to win. Nobel economist Paul Krugman writes that “China has overtaken America” with Its larger economy, its annual graduation of four times as many engineers, and its generation of twice as much electricity as the US. Krugman notes that the US is “in danger of being permanently overtaken by China’s technological and economic prowess,” and Trump’s assaults on our science and education systems further jeopardizes our futures.[ii]
In fact, Trump’s responses to China have been chaotic and contradictory. He condemns China’s “’unheard of’ controls on rare earth minerals” as ‘sinister and hostile,” and then he turns around and asserts that, “it will all be fine.” He was to meet Xi Jinping in Seoul, then he wasn’t, then he did. The New York Times explainsthat Trump has “repeatedly seesawed between retaliation and reconciliation, leaving questions about whether he has a larger strategy.”
Ironically, our would-be monarch emulates ancient and current Chinese practices. In the Tang era tradition, he has used trade negotiations to exact what he boasts are nearly a trillion dollars in tribute from Japan and South Korea. Emulating today’s Chinese state capitalism, he tilts away from free markets and takes government stakes in companies that produce national security resources. That list begins with Intel, U.S. Steel, and MP Materials, a rare-earth mining company. And don’t forget that Trump and Xi appear to be almost in competition to see who can purge more of the senior leaders to ensure their loyalty to the leader. But, while Trump favors “smash and grab” imperialism, China, with the exception of the South China Sea, employs more subtle economic strategies to extend its regional and global influence.
There is also the classical military competition for Indo-Pacific dominance. At the end of the 19th century, driven by White Christian manifest destiny, the US launched its overseas empire by conquering steppingstones to the China market: Philippines, Guam, and Samoa –as well as Cuba and Puerto Rico in the Western Hemisphere. Its Asia-Pacific empire expanded with Japan’s WWII defeat and the transformation of the Pacific Ocean into an “American Lake.” Hundreds of US military bases enforce the imperial domain from Korea and Japan to the Philippines, Guam, Australia, and Diego Garcia, soon to be joined by a new base on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean.[iii]
Before the Opium Wars, China’s empire was the world’s most advanced civilization. It wasn’t based on conquest but was a tributary system requiring those wishing to engage with the Middle Kingdom to kowtow and pay tribute to the emperor. The 1860s Taiping Rebellion and the 20th century revolutionary civil war were devastating, but China last fought a war two generations ago. It was against Vietnam and didn’t work out well for Beijing. China’s primary strategy has been to surround, isolate, and demonstrate overwhelming power to bring military rivals to heel without resorting to mass murder. We see this in its reunification campaign for Taiwan, its South China Sea territorial claims, and in its massive military buildup.
And then nuclear MAD hangs over the U.S.-Chinese military competition. An accident, incident, or miscalculation as U.S. and Chinese naval and air forces confront one another in close proximity around Taiwan and in the South China Sea, could trigger escalation to great power – even nuclear – war. With our peace movement’s traditional focus on Europe and the Middle East, we urgently need to engage with Indo-Pacific dynamics.
Biden and Trump have attempted to “contain” China with a network Indo-Pacific alliances, military bases, and intermediate range missiles and missile defenses deployed around China’s periphery. China’s greatest vulnerability has long been a possible invasion from the sea. And, even if you weren’t there at the time, remember Britain’s 19th century Opium War invasions and Japan’s brutal aggression beginning in the 1930s. Thus, to protect its coastal cities, Beijing’s military enforces claims to 80% of the South China Sea – claims contested by five other nations.
Nor can China forget U.S. nuclear threats in 1955, ‘58, and ’96, or Russia’s in 1969. Beijing has annually been adding an estimated 100 nuclear warheads a year to its arsenal to counter the perceived growing U.S. threat. Its smaller minimum deterrent nuclear arsenal is theoretically vulnerable to U.S. first strikes. So China is apparently seeking nuclear parity with the U.S. and Russia. So, our survival depends on the actions of the three U.S., Chinese, and Russian nuclear scorpions in the proverbial bottle.
The U.S. Indo-Pacific alliance system is now also challenged by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization neo-alliance, led by the Chinese-Russian alliance at its core and augmented by their alliances with North Korea. When the SCO leaders commemorated the 80th anniversary of Japan’s and Germany’s World War II defeats, Trump responded with contempt, posting: “Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against the United States of America.” That’s some way to build peaceful relations!
Elbridge Colby, Undersecretary of Defense, is the primary author of Trump Indo-Pacific military policies. He hedges about whether to defend Taiwan, writing that “To make Taiwan defensible…Taiwan must do more.” But Colby is deeply committed to doing everything possible to reinforce US hegemony. To augment the U.S. military pivot to Asia, the Pacific, and now the Indian Ocean, he advocates reducing U.S. support for Ukraine and has begun augmenting the Pentagon’s Indo-Pacific forces by reducing US troop levels in Europe.[iv]
Like Colby, Trump prioritizes Taiwan’s self-defense over U.S. intervention should Beijing seeks reunification by force. But he holds to strategic ambiguity and has expressed continuing U.S. commitments to defend Taiwan. This despite the Biden administration having concluded that Taiwan can only be defended by means of a threatened U.S. nuclear first-strike against China. That, of course, could spark a thermonuclear exchange.
No surprise, Trump has no strategic vision except domination. But we shouldn’t discount possible openings that could come with his transactional approach to just about everything. He compensates for lack of strategic vision with tariffs and bluster. For Taiwan, he hedges, demanding that the island’s strategically vital chip industry build production facilities in the US. And he questions the “freeloader” island’s military dependence on the US.
Divisions within the administration reflect Trump’s contradictions. Some “America First” officials advocate returning to regional blocs reminiscent of the 19th century Concert of Europe. These officials are less committed to alliances, and we saw their influence in the massive tariffs imposed on India despite successive presidents having courted New Delhi as a potential ally to offset China. This clique also forced a review of the AUKUS alliance, but they failed to undermine it and the commitment to provide Australia with nuclear submarines, which are now also being requested by South Korea.
Traditional military imperialists retain greater influence in the administration. In Asia last month, Trump reaffirmed the “Golden Alliance” with Japan and the alliance with South Korea. And soon after coming to power, Hegseth and Rubio signaled their commitments by traveling to South Korea and Japan and by dispatching a U.S. warship to the Taiwan Strait.
Beijing’s priorities differ significantly from those of Washington. Chinese priorities are domestic and international stability. Beijing wants to take not destroy, what it understands as its rogue province, Taiwan, in order to limit casualties and infrastructure damage and to seize, not decimate, Taipei’s advanced chip making facilities. Thus, it prefers to win Taiwanese hearts and minds, primarily via Taiwan’s economic dependence on the world’s largest economy. Invading Taiwan would mean loss of international markets, diplomatic isolation, and possible long-term resistance. It also bears noting that while most Taiwanese no longer identify as Chinese and favor future independence, few of them will fight for it.[v]
There is an alternative to the new U.S.-China Cold War. We still have the paradigm that ended the first Cold War: common security diplomacy.
There is an alternative to the new U.S.-China Cold War. We still have the paradigm that ended the first Cold War: common security diplomacy. Then, when preparations for thermonuclear war spiraled almost beyond control, Swedish Prime Minister Palme convened senior Soviet, European, and US officials to devise an off ramp from threatened nuclear Armageddon. It came with the concept of Common Security, recognition that no nation can be secure if its rivals feel threatened. Through difficult negotiations, Washington and Moscow agreed not to deploy the terrorizing, accurate, and decapitating intermediate nuclear armed missiles that were driving the spiraling nuclear arms race. Many of you here will remember that by addressing their respective fears, the two powers opted not to deploy the SS 20, Cruise, and Pershing II missiles. That agreement with the INF Treaty ended the Cold War in 1987, before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Then, from the Paris Treaty through the NATO-Russia Founding Act, common security secured the first two decades of Euro-Atlantic Post-Cold War peace.
Common Security can also be applied to China. The 2024 Common Security in the Indo-Pacific Region report, written by scholars and movement leaders from across the region, illustrates that the paradigm can also be applied there.[vi] (I have brought copies of that report with me.) Tensions in the Taiwan Strait can be reduced with shared recognition that Taiwan’s future cannot be determined by military means, that provocative military actions by all parties should cease, and that the One China doctrine negotiated by Presidents Nixon and Carter must be respected.
The South China Sea can also be demilitarized and denuclearized. As former U.S. Ambassador Chas Freeman remarked, resolution of the Sea’s territorial claims do not require Washington’s intervention. We should, he said, “Let the people of the region sort it out.” Provocative military operations should cease, as should the construction of all new US and Chinese military bases there. The region’s nations can engage in bilateral and multilateral negotiations for a South China Sea Code of Conduct. And No First Use nuclear doctrines and a regional nuclear weapons-free zone need to be negotiated.
Confronting the Counterrevolution
Then there is the brutal counterrevolution being waged by Trump and MAGA here in the United States. Much of this will be familiar to you, but bear with me. My understandings of authoritarianism are rooted in lessons from the Nazi Holocaust, in the refugee philosopher Hannah Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism, Carl Jaspers On the Question of German Guilt, James Baldwin, Albert Camus, Arthur Kestler, and Milovan Djilas. Essential to Arendt’s analysis of Hitler’s and Stalin’s dictatorships were her understandings of the central roles played by fear, terror, and ideology, all designed to destroy individuality. This resulted in personal atomization, isolation, and totalitarian control of society. Essential to these processes were the assaults on truth.
Sound familiar? We are dealing with very aggressive fascist forces, but the U.S. is not yet a fascist nation. Billionaire, racist, kleptocratic autocrats among them Trump, whose father was in the Ku Klux Klan, as well as Musk and Thiel whose worldviews were forged by African apartheid, and their peers are all on the offensive.
Fortunately, as we saw in October’s No King’s demonstrations, there is broad popular, legal, academic, and media resistance to Trump/MAGA fascism.
The Trump/MAGA rise and seizure of power are the consequence of at least four powerful forces: 1) unresolved racism rooted in the country’s original sin of slavery; 2) the loss of Roosevelt-Johnson New Deal values combined with neoliberal greed and the technological and structural changes that allowed the creation of the billionaire class and catastrophic economic inequality; 3) corruptions of the Democratic Party that date from President Clinton and before, and 4) the debilitating, costly, and failed Post Cold War imperial wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere that, along with the rise of China and the Global South, which hav accelerated U.S. and Western decline.
For historical analogy, think about German dislocations following their World War I defeat, the Versailles Treaty which inflicted staggering inflation and poverty in Germany, and the power of historic antisemitic and Nazi ideologies.
We speak of the Trump/MAGA regime “flooding the zone.” Illegal and unconstitutional assaults come at us faster than we can track them. Over the past 40 years the Supreme Court, which promised hope in the 1950s and 60s, has been stacked with extreme right-wing functionaries, and Republicans in Congress have given up on holding the Executive Branch accountable, except with the possible exception of the Trump/Epstein scandal. They fear that they will lose their status and privileges unless they click their heels and salute in response to each destructive Trump demand.
In addition to protecting our innocent immigrant neighbors, many of us are also working to understand the implications of a “little-noticed national security directive that identifies “anti-Christian’ and anti-American views as indicators of radical left violence.” National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence directs the Justice Department, the FBI and other national security agencies and departments “to take action against anti-Americanism; anti-capitalism anti-Christianity…extremism on migration, race and gender; hostility to traditional American family values and traditional views on religion, and to American views on morality.[vii] Morality? Trump, MAGA, and more than a few democrats!
Reading and listening to our daily news has indeed become painful. On a daily basis we read or hear about the government’s illegal and unconscionable actions. Innocent immigrants, sometimes citizens, kidnapped from our streets, from their homes, schools, places of worship, and workplaces by masked Gestapo-like police in Trump/MAGA’s white nationalist ethnic cleansing. The Supreme Court authorizing racial profiling. And the former FBI Director and the former New Your Attorney General have been indicted for attempting to hold Trump accountable for just a few of his many crimes.
Orwell, Vonnegut, and Zinn wrote that if we don’t know our history, we cannot be free. Not unlike German universities in the 1930s and ‘40s, Trump is requiring institutions of higher learning to align with MAGA ideology. Priority funding is to go to universities, like the University of Texas, which revise their curricula, including any criticism of conservative ideas, and who hire faculty aligned with MAGA. References to diversity, equity, and inclusion are being banned from universities, workplaces, and even the military. Thus, the history of slavery and the struggles for justice are being literally whitewashed, with curricula rewritten, and in some cases books vanishing from libraries. Meanwhile in the tradition of Putin, Xi, and Orban, our press faces constant threats and restrictions. Look at who now populates the White House and Pentagon press offices.
Beyond history, the president who once advised people toinject cleaning agents to overcome Covid, has unleashed a war on science. He’s blocked billions of dollars needed for research and unleashed his anti-vaxer Secretary of Health and Human Services against our health systems and our very lives.
Stupids In Charge
History we know does not repeat itself but it sometime rhymes. Recently reading about Charles De Gaulle, I learned that during his first term as French head of state he humiliated a cabinet member saying, “I chose the most stupid man, because I thought he would be the most loyal.” Bingo! The Nobel Prize economist Paul Krugman put it well saying that we are being ruled by an “autocracy of dunces.”
Several weeks ago, Trump and Secretary of Defense Hegseth, the former TV personality who installed a makeup room in the Pentagon and who sports a Christian Crusader tattoo, ordered 800 generals and admirals to assemble at Quantico Marine base. The gathering’s purpose was a deeply held secret, arousing fears that like in other banana republics, our military would be required to pledge loyalty to the revered leader and not to the Constitution.
So, it was with obvious displeasure that they endured embarrassing, racist, and rambling bloviation from the Commander in Chief. Generals and admirals had to sit through a soliloquy about how presidents should walk to avoid falling, condemnations of fat, and disregard for racial and gender equality. More disturbing, the President urged the military to use his unconstitutional troop deployments to U.S. cities as training grounds “to fight the enemy within” – meaning urban communities of color. This was followed with brutal and dehumanizing effect in Chicago and by a warning from Governor Pritzker that the deployments are being made in part to prepare for the seizure of ballot boxes during our 2026 mid-term elections.
Trump’s incoherence was so unhinged that it raised questions about invoking the 25th amendment that provides for the removal of an incapacitated President. But, of course, his cabinet is stocked by insecure and incompetent loyalists.
The day after that military assembly, the Pentagon went on to instill fear among 5,000 of its most senior officers and employees. They are now required to sign nondisclosure agreements and will be subject to random polygraph tests to confirm their loyalty to Trump and to prevent embarrassing leaks. Again, think in terms of the possibility of using the military to enforce a dictatorship!
There are also the dangers of Trump wars and greater institutionalization of militarism. Our headlines are full of nonsense about what will prove to be the failures of Trump’s so called Middle East grand bargain and the very real dangers of military and economic smash and grab campaigns to seize Venezuela, Panama, Greenland, and Gaza’s beaches.
With history rhyming and the Post Cold War era now history, we live in time reminiscent of the on that led to World War I. We have a Thucydides trap of rising and declining powers, a dynamic that has often led to catastrophic wars. There are arms races with new technologies, complex and uncertain alliance structures, intense economic competition and integration, growing nationalism, territorial disputes, and wild card actors from Trump to Netanyahu.
Compounding these dynamics is the Ukraine War which is a war between Putin and the West over Europe’s future. And it still carries the possible danger of escalation to nuclear war. No longer contained to the Ukrainian borderlands, drones that threaten Europe’s airports and infrastructure compound fears that are driving increasing military preparations, spending, and exercises across almost Western Europe.
There is also a broader frame of reference which came from Ulysses Torres, a Chilean Methodist minister who was imprisoned and tortured by the Pinochet dictatorship. At a meeting of peace movement organizers in the 1980s, he was asked “When do you know if you have a military government.” His answer: “Look at your national budget.”
More than half of our national government’s discretionary spending is devoted to the military and to military-related institutions like the CIA, the National Security Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency. With that budget now exceeding a trillion dollars and totaling 40% of world military spending, U.S. military spending is greater than Russia’s and China’s combined. Trump is now also committed to the military-industrial complex’s Golden Dome missile defense boondoggle. It won’t work, and it will bankrupt the nation when we can’t even afford health care, food for the poor, or housing.
But we do need to acknowledge that Europe lies between a rock and a hard place. On one side is NATO dominated by the increasingly undemocratic and autocratic U.S. And on the other there is undemocratic and autocratic Russia, whose response to NATO expansion was the invasion of Ukraine and its call to roll back NATO membership of former Soviet republics.
Some Way Out of Here
Okay! So let me pick you up off the floor. Hope is something that we find within ourselves and that we create. And those are things that we can do. At the most basic level, with fascism and neoliberalism threatening our most basic human rights, the imperative is to insist on respect for our dignity, for constitutional democracy, and for the rule of legitimate law.
Friends, this may not be the bottom of the ninth inning, but it is certainly late in the game. We can take some hope from last week’s election results. from Trump’s terrible polling numbers, and from the Epstein-Trump scandal. But we must walk and chew gum at the same time. We urgently need to protect constitutional democracy and to prevent catastrophic great power and smash and grab wars.
Noam Chomsky put it well several years ago: There is almost nothing, he said, that we don’t know how to deal with. At the height of the pandemic, he reminded us that there were practical solutions to containing Covid. Like the people gathered this week at COP30, he reminded us that we can heal the environment with practical solutions. Nuclear weapons? Obviously, he said, get rid of them. The question he stressed is whether we have the will. And there is, he reminded us, no alternative to doing all that we can.
And friends, we are not alone, and we can take strength from our past. For me, that means drawing on stories and courage of ordinary Europeans I was privileged to know and work with decades ago who had resisted Nazi occupations nonviolently. They even had some funny stories. For all of us there is Civil Rights history and the knowledge that people of color in this country have never had it easy but have persisted. It is also worth reading about the sit down strikes of the late 1930s, the creation of unions, and their roles in the New Deal, Great Society, and Civil Rights victories. And we take hope from the nuclear weapons freeze movement of the 1980s, when a very small band of organizers played leading if unsung roles in reducing the nuclear danger and ending the Cold War.
Our greatest responsibility is to preserve constitutional democracy. If the mid-term or presidential elections are stolen, we need to remember the meaning of people’s power and sovereignty. As in other countries, we can defend democracy with a nation-wide general strike.
We can use our state and local governments to protect and to provide the resources that are being denied by the heartless Trump/MAGA government.
Remember too that republicans are no less vulnerable to nuclear cataclysm than are Democrats, or Socialists. We need to press them all to support the extension of the essential elements of the New START Treaty before it expires, and to prevent any resumption of nuclear weapons testing.
As for China, Venezuela, Gaza, Greenland, and Canada, war is not the answer, and they are NOT for sale.
Friends, as Miles Horton taught us, we make our road by walking, and to quote Martin Luther King, Jr. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valleys of authoritarianism, deceit, and militarism, to the sunlit path of justice and peace. Now is the time to lift our nations from the quick sands of brutality and injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all….”
Thank you for your patience and attention. Let’s see where this takes us.
[i] The Consequences of China’s New Rare Earths Export Restrictions
[ii] China Has Overtaken America – Paul Krugman
[iii] Timeline of United States military operations – Wikipedia
[iv] Berlin left in the dark as Washington weighs troop cuts in Europe – POLITICO
[v] Reported by a Taiwanese pollster in a conference under Chatham House rules.
[vi] Common Security in the Indo-Pacific Region (October 2024)
[vii] Ken Klippenstein. Trump’s NSPM-7 Labels Common Beliefs as Terrorism “Indicators”, Trump’s NSPM-7 Labels Common Beliefs As Terrorism “Indicators”