The Transcendental Madness of the U.S. Government
From Kabul, to Bagdad, to Wuhan, to Moscow, the madmen in Washington gamble with the lives and fortunes of humanity.
This morning a read a long and fascinating essay in the New York Times titled The Secret Pentagon War Game That Offers a Stark Warning for Our Times: The devastating outcome of the 1983 game reveals that nuclear escalation inevitably spirals out of control.
The writer, William Langewiesche—who is also the author of The Atomic Bazaar: Dispatches From the Underground World of Nuclear Trafficking—provides a detailed exposition of what I have been worrying about since the U.S. government sent Kamala Harris to the Munich Security Conference in February 2022 to represent the U.S. in talks about the rapidly escalating tension between Russia and Ukraine.
The essay concludes by quoting Paul Bracken, a Yale international relations professor who recently wrote a book titled The Second Nuclear Age: Strategy, Danger, and the New Power Politics.
Bracken flagged what he called the “transcendental madness” of the whole enterprise. He said: “Sometimes the only way to deal with it is with humor. ‘Dr. Strangelove’ started out as a serious movie about nuclear war, and Kubrick just couldn’t do it. So he turned it into a dark comedy.” But Bracken is not laughing. He believes that the nuclear modernization currently underway is necessary but misguided. He said, for instance: “Building a harder command-and-control system using blockchain so we can get the ‘go’ code to the missile forces is an improvement on one of the most fantastically unlikely scenarios that anyone can dream up. I’m at least looking at real-world threats and dangerous pathways to nuclear war. I don’t think a bolt from the blue is one of those. So I’m looking at the right problems, with inadequate skills perhaps, but the Pentagon is applying high levels of skills to the wrong problem.”
History shows that deterrence often fails and that countries can maneuver themselves into corners where they have no choice but to enter into wars they cannot win, wars of assured self-destruction. Now we are entering an era where nuclear arms control is an open question, nonproliferation has failed, conventional conflicts are spreading, overwrought nationalism is on the rise, the use of small nuclear weapons again seems possible, deterrence is weakening and fools dream of managing nuclear escalation in the midst of battle. Nuclear war in some form seems to be coming to the neighborhood. There is little sign that changes are being pursued to lower the risk. There is no reason to panic, but Katie, bar the door.
Bracken states what I have long known to be the case. Time and again throughout history, fallible men in positions of power have grossly overestimated the amount of foresight and control they possess. Embarking on the path of escalation always triggers an unpredictable train of actions and reactions with an uncertain outcome.
If the last 25 years have taught us anything, it’s that the hyper-aggressive control freaks in Washington who meddle in the affairs of mankind NEVER know the outcomes of their adventures. Consider that the U.S. government beat a hasty and chaotic retreat from Afghanistan after a 20-year occupation—leaving the Taliban in control—just a few months before it sent Kamala Harris to Munich to confound and bait the Russian Bear into taking aggressive action in Ukraine.
Consider as well the the U.S. government continues to avoid pursuing a final and consequential investigation of how U.S. biotechnology—supplied by Professor Ralph Baric at UNC Chapel Hill—played a key role in developing SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of COVID-19.
I implore the incoming Trump administration to call for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine and to seek an Austrian-style neutrality deal for that country. The American people have no dog in this fight between Russia and Ukraine, which ultimately came about when Ukrainian billionaire oligarchs made the catastrophic mistake of getting into bed with the CIA and the Clinton and Biden crime families. The security of the poor Ukrainian people and the American people have never been a consideration for the madmen who have sought to maintain a state of enmity with Russia since 1993.
I was just thinking this morning that everything the US touches turns to no good. We made life more difficult in the EU. We are bombing, starving, and murdering people in the Middle East. We are the reason 600000 people are dead in Ukraine and we are responsible for the dead in Russia because we provoked that war. The list could go on. We are the enemy of the world
The book "Indefensible Weapons: The Political and Psychological Case Against Nuclearism" by Robert Jay Lifton and Richard Falk still applies forty years after it was written. I read Lifton's half of the book in the mid-1980's when I was working for a man making films about nuclear weapons and the threat of nuclear war. I couldn't believe how crazy Edward Teller was...how crazy the entire nuclear war "business" was. Lifton had an explanation for the madness.
In any case, here we are. We have a demented man in the Presidency and a woman who appears to be both mentally ill and drinking too much in the Vice Presidency. Next in the succession of power, according to the U.S. Constitution, is the Speaker of the House of Representatives. I think it's time for the Speaker to take over the White House.
Putin knows he can "talk turkey" with Trump. But we have to get to Trump's inauguration without Biden and/or Harris pushing the world over the brink, and without the Secret Service allowing Trump to be assassinated or disabled by an assassination attempt.