The Threat of the Threat of War

A couple weeks back, The New York Times released a morning briefing after an article which covered the findings of The Commission on the National Defense Strategy. The report starts off bombastically enough that the briefing quotes the first sentence wholesale, and I will too:

“The threats the United States faces are the most serious and most challenging the nation has encountered since 1945 and include the potential for near-term major war.”

So spooky, right? Why, 1945–that's Nazi times! Back when we thought they were bad, that is.

The report, and its ensuing coverage, point fingers at the suspects you might expect: Russia, China, North Korea, Iran. Russia and China, in particular, are seen as expanding their militaries and economies in a way that's threatening to the United States, or something. I want to talk about this report, and the supposed threats therein, because they do represent a threat to us–just not one covered in the report.

The Supposed Threat

There are very real things going on in the world that are the fault of the nations in the Commission's report. Russia, obviously, started the first major land war in Europe since World War II. China, most recently, has rammed a ship in the Second Thomas Shoal, a contested part of territorial waters between China and Philippines. China has been swinging wide lately in general, with fly-bys into Taiwanese airspace and missile launches just within the past week or so.

A lot of hay has been made of Iran and its "proxies," as well, with the report working hard to ensure we in the West conflate Iran with virtually every entity in the region. Working even harder, though, is the New York Times, which for some reason decided to mention Iran more than it mentioned Russia in its briefing. And again, not to say Iran doesn't do bad shit–because of course they do, they do heinous shit–but we can no longer simply imbibe media straight from normal sources. I am not apologizing for the misdeeds of any nation, but the threat we face from Iran or Hezbollah or whomever is about as clear and present a threat as a rattlesnake is to me sitting in my living room in Ohio–which is to say, not much of one.

The reason we're hearing drumbeats from outlets like the New York Times is because the United States wants a war. Our leaders may say different, but it's a fib. If we didn't want war we wouldn't be embracing Israel's very American tactic of "de-escalation through escalation" when fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon (as if that's their only target). We wouldn't be sending billions in weapons to Israel instead of billions in aid to Gaza–or our own communities reeling from the effects of Hurricane Helene. We're hearing about war because it's on the minds of the monied in this country, and they want another buck.

The Real Threat

And that's the real problem. The media isn't worried about Russia, or China, or Iran. They're buttering us up for the day we get "dragged" into outright conflict with whichever enemy we decide (Iran, judging by how things are going–China is too scary and Russia too white). With enough prep the American public will be much more likely to accept the idea, having constantly heard of the evils of our enemies.

This is not to say that outright war with Iran or whomever physically threatens us. Sure, there is the possibility of nuclear weapons being used, but that has been the case since that particular bullet left the barrel–and the United States fired the first and second shot. The threat of the threat is, instead, that we accept another war and all it entails. As with most things here, on the edge of the abyss, what happens in the next few years commits us to falling over the abyss, teetering a little longer, or beginning to step back.

The abyss is two-tiered: the climate crisis; and the ultimate collapse of human systems. Falling into the former assures the latter, while the opposite is, perhaps, not quite the case. But both are on the table, for certain, and both can be almost assured depending on the actions of the United States in this decade. This is the danger–not Hezbollah lobbing a rocket in our direction, but the US plunging forward as if we're still living in the 1990s (when we had a little breathing room on the abyss) and sinking our resources into a conflict that damns us morally (though that ship has sailed) and physically.

The Fallout

Let's ignore the turpitude of the United States getting embroiled in yet another war in the Middle East, after we've spent actual decades murdering our way through the region and back and resulting in the deaths of over an actual million people. Instead, let's focus on the logistics. In order to deal with these supposed threats around the globe, the Commission on National Defense says we need more resources put into our military. We outspend every nation on the planet when it comes to defense, more than nations 2-10 combined on the Top 10 list of largest militaries. Let's say this isn't absolutely ridiculous for a moment.

The US military, self-reporting in 2017, placed its greenhouse gas emissions over that of Morocco, Peru, and Sweden. Assume that figure has been massaged a bit and you can probably elevate it to a more medium-sized nation. Assume that figure increases further when the military is engaged in a full-blown war. That's a whole new nation pumping CO2 into the atmosphere when what we really need is a nation-sized CO2 sink. Not to mention that the aforementioned budget of this CO2-pumping-machine would be better spent investing in green infrastructure here and abroad (as futile as that is) and repairing infrastructure already damaged by climate change. And don't forget that this little exercise hurts both ways–these resources aren't just killing us on expenditure, but bringing us closer to the collapse of our energy systems just by virtue of their being dug up.

There's the distraction, as well–our national media spends very little time covering climate change, and that ratio is likely to thin when we're at war with an already-demonized enemy. This really couldn't be timed better, in that regard, as people are more and more ready to accept that climate change is here and fucking things up. Interrupting that awakening puts a halt to increasing public pressure and shifts our focus away from the real existential threat. When you remember that the people in power like the status quo and want to milk it through its death throes, you kinda get the whole picture.

Finally, there are all the moral implications we've been ignoring up to this point: the tens of thousands of young people we'll commit to this conflict who will be physically and mentally scarred and not receive proper support; the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of casualties that will inevitably ensue and likewise left without support after we come and go; and the resources we will inevitably steal and give to rich white people to sell to us to keep our economy going.

Wag the Dog

All of this is to say that pushing for a war right now not only serves as a stellar distraction, it is a deadly one. With world resources pushed closer to the brink, climate change dancing on the precipice of irreversible tipping points, and our local plutocrats looking to steal the last drops of worth at the cost of whichever nation they choose, we cannot passively let this country fall into another war.

We also shouldn't let the Democrats have their way, if for no other reason than part of why they want a war is to push the American public to vote for them. Fuck 'em, for that alone.