THE WORLD'S CHAOS IS "COMING HOME TO ROOST" - THE BROADER MEANING OF THE CAMPUS ANTIWAR PROTESTS
- Gonzalo Santos
- May 4, 2024
- 6 min read
This NYT article mentions how the world is now watching the dramatic unfolding of a new antiwar movement in the United States from their own vantage points: "In some ways, the protests and the response to them are a Rorschach test for the world — the analysis often offering more insight into local politics [in their different countries] than into America."
That may be quite true, but regardless, today's world coverage is unmistakably exposing and conveying the actual reality of deepening domestic polarization over the continued U.S. support for Israel's widely-condemned genocidal war in Gaza, with strong echoes of how the U.S. war in Vietnam also "came home" in 1968.
But things have changed since that era.
For one thing, the U.S. is no longer sitting on top of most of the world's capital, as it did after WW II and into the very prosperous 1960s. Though its national economy is still the largest single-country economy in the world, it descended some time ago to the unenviable status of being the number one debtor nation.
And although it still has, by far, the largest military apparatus and greatest far-flung network of bases around the world, it can only continue funding this apparatus, bases, and imperialist wars by directly disinvesting on its own peoples’ well-being and safety net, its own infrastructure, and even its own future as a major world power.
Empires go broke when they become "overextended." The British went through that, winning the two world wars of the first half of the 20th century only to give up its far-flung empire in bankruptcy. The U.S. has long passed that threshold, sometime in the 1970s, when it delinked the dollar from the gold standard, faced a mighty oil cartel (OPEC), and poured treasure and soldiers in Vietnam with disastrous results. The Soviet Union lost its empire - and its own country - to such misguided adventures (Afghanistan).
The U.S. turned to less costly "low intensity counterinsurgency warfare" in the 1980s, in places like Central America, but with nothing to show for it except blood on its hands, a loss of moral leadership in the world, and massive inflows of irregular refugees it tried to reject. Saddam Hussein came to the rescue, ironically. The U.S. under Bush Sr. pulled off its last "profitable" land war in Asia in the early 1990s, when other rich countries funded the U.S. military operations to dislodge Iraq from its land grab in Kuwait.
Then came 9/11 and the "global war on terrorism."
The U.S. response - going for empire on false premises - has been draining treasure and lives ever since, starting with the Iraq/Afghanistan wars started by Bush Jr. with bipartisan support, which only ended in 2022. The U.S. funded those costly wars (in the trillions of dollars) with further astronomical national debt.
Now the duopoly, led by that old cold war/war on terrorism hawk Joe Biden, seems to have settled on fighting "proxy" wars by funding U.S. allies to do the fighting rather than sending U.S. troops, something policy advocates consider "a bargain."
Trumpism represents the hyper-isolationist reaction to even that “cost-saving” approach - trying to get Europe to pay for most of NATO and for most of the war in Ukraine, threatening to pull out from both otherwise. The problem for those in charge of projecting and maintaining U.S. global power is that to do so shrinks the U.S.’s hegemonic domain in its most strategic area - western Europe -, "ceding" the zone not just to rival Russia, which is seen with much alarm, but to a set-free European Union, which is an equal, but much less publicly avowed concern.
As to the Middle East, the duopoly's conundrum is how to revive and sustain U.S. hegemony in that vital oil region relying on its previous Cold War ally now causing much more harm than good these days. For one thing, Israel is actively and morally sabotaging U.S. strategic interests in the Arab/Muslim world, by prosecuting its genocidal action with utter disregard to world opinion. On the other, the U.S. is footing the entire bill for its reckless military aggression, not just in Gaza but vis-a-vis Iran, Lebanon, and Syria. (The recent supplemental aid to Israel went from $14 to $26 billion in a matter of weeks).
Have you noticed how quiet Trump remained around the fierce congressional debate over further Israel funding? He would care less about the Palestinian genocide ("finish the job" he and his handler son-in-law said), but conspicuously did not throw his considerable weight demanding more immediate military aid to Israel.
Biden represents the hawkish but money-strapped foreign policy liberal establishment, still willing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars "on the cheap", as they see it, funding the proxy wars in Ukraine/Israel, without sending any U.S. troops on the ground, but win them "to the last Ukrainian" and "to the last Palestinian".
Neither side foresaw the chaotic domestic spill-over consequences of their foreign policies we are witnessing today: for Biden, the new antiwar movement in American campuses, soon to expand into other social sectors, and the public abandonment of his Arab American supporters - both developments sure to disrupt his reelection chances this year -; and for Trump, the abandonment of his Christian Zionist base over both his silence over Israel funding and his reversal over abortion bans, sure to disrupt his reelection chances, too!
The truth is that nobody in the duopoly's foreign policy establishment are dealing with reality - neither domestic nor international. Both sides assume, unrealistically, the lasting centrality of U.S. global hegemony, which is really in tatters at the United Nations, and even in its chaotic theaters of action. Their alternative projects to resurrect this lost hegemony ("Make America Great Again" / "We must continue to support those allies that stand up to Putin/Hamas, etc.") are neither sustainable, effective, nor wise.
Because these wars merely reflect the geopolitical tensions that are due to the flawed, now crumbling architecture of global governance instituted and dominated by the United States over the past 80 years. The world urgently needs replacing this crumbling architecture with a new and better architecture, inclusive of all large, medium, and small countries, based on a post-capitalist political-economy capable of ushering a superior, universal social contract for all of humanity - one that transcends the present highly unequal imbalance of wealth and power by region and social classes, and one that does not come at the expense of the planet's climate and biosphere.
The world needs universal cooperation to forge systemwide solutions to its many pressing systemwide problems - nuclear proliferation, climate change, vast poverty and social inequality, criminalized migration and restricted citizenship in an era of global integration, the proliferation of wars., etc.
Restoring U.S. global hegemony is NOT a systemwide solution - rather, all efforts to stubbornly achieve this anachronistic goal will only exacerbate the systemic crisis gripping the world, including exacerbate the social and political chaos already evident in the U.S. itself.
The task of the American people, then, is to realize this, toss away all delusion of perpetual global hegemony and "American Exceptionalism," rein it its duopoly, stop its proclivities for wars, insist in the peaceful resolution of all domestic and international conflicts, and, if it is deemed irremediably broken and unresponsive to anyone but the rapacious American plutocracy, replace its elite-controlled, two-party farce with a better, more democratic, more accountable, pluralistic, and inclusive political system. American democracy needs an extreme makeover!
Its foreign policy needs to embrace a polycentric, more egalitarian, functional, inclusive, and sustainable global governance architecture. The U.S. needs to accommodate to a system open to the full and equal participation of all of humanity, including its autonomous, robust, and dynamic global civil society and social movements for peace and justice.
In that sense, the current U.S. college student antiwar movement against the genocide in Gaza is showing the way, already making a significant contribution to this new and visionary path, after the prior disappointing experiments with empire-building Bushism and isolationist MAGA Trumpism, on the one hand, and neoliberal, hawkish but multialteralist Obama/Biden/Clintonism, on the other. The students correctly reject all forms of big power projection and genocide in the Middle East, whether by its own hands or at the hands of its funded proxy, Israel. A stunning difference between this antiwar movement and past ones, is that it exhibits to the world the active participation of both Arab/Muslim Americans and Jewish Americans, an unassailable moral high ground that refutes the relentless phony and malicious accusations of being antiSemitic.
The labor movement, the faith-based peace & justice movement, the Black Lives Matter movement, the immigrant right movement, the climate change movement, and the women & LGBTQ movements now need to step up to the plate; and they need to fight the good fight and get in good trouble not just over their singular issues, but in unity and solidarity with each other, as the only way to defiantly and successfully challenge the entire duopoly - both the fascist wing and the imperialist liberal wing - and help usher in a new era of true and lasting social change to the nation and the world.
The whole world is watching! The whole world will join you!
#AnotherWorldIsPossible #AnotherNorthAmericaIsNecessary #Arise #Rebel #Resist #CeasefireNow #StopTheGenocide #StopAllWars
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