[Peace-discuss] FW: The world of threats to the US is an illusion

[David Johnson]

Stephen Kinzer

The world of threats to the US is an illusion

By Stephen Kinzer Globe Staff  April 12, 2015 

Description: A Japanese officer watches as a Landing Craft Air Cushion
transports US Marines and sailors and soldiers from Japan during a joint
military exercise in California in 2014.

JOE KLAMAR/AFP/Getty Images

A Japanese officer watches as a Landing Craft Air Cushion transports US
Marines and sailors and soldiers from Japan during a joint military exercise
in California in 2014.

When Americans look out at the world, we see a swarm of threats. China seems
resurgent and ambitious. Russia is aggressive. Iran menaces our allies.
Middle East nations we once relied on are collapsing in flames. Latin
American leaders sound steadily more anti-Yankee. Terror groups capture
territory and commit horrific atrocities. We fight Ebola with one hand while
fending off Central American children with the other.

In fact, this world of threats is an illusion. The United States has no
potent enemies. We are not only safe, but safer than any big power has been
in all of modern history.

Geography is our greatest protector. Wide oceans separate us from potential
aggressors. Our vast homeland is rich and productive. No other power on
earth is blessed with this security.

Our other asset is the weakness of potential rivals. It will be generations
before China is able to pose a serious challenge to the United States - and
there is little evidence it wishes to do so. Russia is weak and in deep
economic trouble - not always a friendly neighbor but no threat to the
United States. Heart-rending violence in the Middle East has no serious
implication for American security. As for domestic terrorism, the risk for
Americans is modest: You have more chance of being struck by lightning on
your birthday than of dying in a terror attack.

Promoting the image of a world full of enemies creates a "security
psychosis" that misshapes our view of the world. It tempts us to interpret
defensive steps taken by other countries as threatening. In extreme cases,
it pushes us into wars aimed at preempting threats that do not actually
exist.

 
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Michael Cohen: Are threats to US bigger than ever? No
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a8x0ACNjrRwAv6K1OikGDP/story.html?p1=Article_Related_Box_Article> 

The reality is that international affairs these days are actually pretty
easy.
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a8x0ACNjrRwAv6K1OikGDP/story.html?p1=Article_Related_Box_Article> 

 

Arms manufacturers profit from the security psychosis even more directly
than militarists. Americans take our staggeringly large defense budget
almost for granted, and lament continuously that other countries do not
build as many exotic weapons systems as we do. Finding new threats is always
good business for someone.

With the United State so dominant in global politics, it's time to secure
this low-threat world. Our strategic goal should be to keep our country as
safe as it is now. That means bringing troublemaking countries out of their
isolation. Ignoring their interests, or seeking "full-spectrum dominance" to
assure that they cannot rise, provokes reactions that will be bad for us in
the long run.

Last year, after the U.S. began encouraging upheaval and helped a successful
right-wing violent coup against a democratically elected government in
Ukraine, NATO decided to "suspend all practical civilian and military
cooperation" with Russia. Moments of crisis, however, are precisely the
times when contact is most urgent. We took advantage of Russia when it was
powerless a quarter-century ago. Future peace requires taking its security
concerns seriously rather than treating the country as an enemy that is
always seeking to best us.

Our policy toward China is less aggressive, but beneath its surface is often
a presumption that one day there must be a showdown between our two
countries. The recent deal between Western nations and Iran is being sold as
the taming of an enemy - although Iran is not our enemy. Neither is Cuba,
despite the warnings of revanchists in Washington and elsewhere. Nor are
most of the enemies-for-a-day that we eagerly seek, from Sandinistas in
Nicaragua to Houthis in Yemen.

I recently asked a United States Navy officer what threats he believed the
United States might confront in the future. To my astonishment, he answered,
"Venezuela." The South American country is in political crisis and careening
toward bankruptcy. Its combat navy counts six frigates and two submarines,
none of them seaworthy. Yet last month President Obama designated Venezuela
an "extraordinary threat to US national security." The search for enemies
can lead to odd places. Especially when the U.S. 1 % and their corporate
media make those definitions based on their wish list of what countries they
would like to undermine in order to further enrich themselves.

This impulse is not peculiarly American. Feeling threatened strengthens
group solidarity. Some thinkers have gone so far as to suggest that since
societies become more united and resolute in the face of enemies, those that
have none should find some.

"It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in
love," Freud wrote, "so long as there are other people left over to receive
the manifestations of their aggressiveness." Nietzsche believed the
nation-state's "profound appreciation of the value of having enemies"
produced a "spiritualization of hostility." A young country especially, he
said, "needs enemies more than friends: in opposition alone does it feel
itself necessary."

When Americans see threats everywhere, we fall into this trap. Believing we
are besieged is strangely comforting. To recognize how safe we are would
require a change of national mindset that we seem reluctant to make.

 

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