Written by Peter Rose   

Cold War II. Another generation of warfare for America?
- Is Kerry’s slip on Ukraine the moment for Nader’s Left-Right Alliance?

One wouldn’t have thought John Kerry could top his “Israel Apartheid State” foot-in-mouth comment made this week on the eve of pending Middle East peace talks. But he’s gone and done it again! Now he’s finally let the cat out of the bag on what the Ukraine adventure is really all about - the $5 billion investment in the Kiev putsch, the escalating confrontation with Russia, the Cold War redivivus. It’s about forward planning for the next financing phase for the global arms industry out of the public fiscus.
In a speech to the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington DC, Kerry called for putting NATO back on a permanent war footing. “After two decades of focusing primarily on our expeditionary missions, the crisis in Ukraine now calls us back to the work that this alliance was originally created to perform” he said. And to be able to do that, NATO members need “…to make credible commitments to increase their spending on defense over the next five years” to at least 2% of GDP.

With Iraq now over, the pull-out from Afghanistan well under way, Syria and the Arab Spring apparently in checkmate and the UN Arms Trade Treaty receiving enthusiastic international support, particularly in Africa, what options remain? Clearly there aren’t many new ideas around. So, putting imagination aside, it’s going to be a rerun of the Cold War with the West vs Russia and China all over again. Barak Obama’s trips to beef up US military options in Europe, in the East with the Philippines, Japan and elsewhere are all clinching encirclement. The cynicism and speed of the turn-about in the global power game is breathtaking and would have Orwell’s Winston Smith in a tailspin.

The last Cold War gives us a very good idea of how the scenario plays out. The new scripting of the good guys and bad guys quickly develops a logic of its own. This translates directly into the funding imperatives necessary to contain the newly fabricated threat. And that it is just a fabrication becomes rapidly obscured with good people properly mobilized to pay for it with both their taxes and their lives. The press plays a crucial role in eliminating any contrarian view and we are seeing just that right now too.

The extremity of the game in hand can be measured by the easy way in which 50 years of slow and painful gains in containing nuclear confrontation are simply brushed aside as acceptable risk in setting up the new funding trap. But can the planet afford it?

Joseph Stiglitz’s now famous prediction that the 2007 financial crisis would be to Global Capital what the fall of the Berlin Wall was to Communism seemed to suggest that as the old order gently faded away a new paradigm of Modernity would somehow emerge. However, what wasn’t taken into account was that in its dying days we would need to deal with a cornered rat, as the Nibelungen prepared to bring down the house in a final and bloody Hitlerian Gotterdamerung.
But is there hope on the horison? Could Ralph Nader’s proposed Left-Right Alliance possibly be the good old US Cavalry riding in to the rescue at the last minute once again? Linking Left and Right in common cause is clearly going to be a hard pill to swallow on both sides of the well-entrenched US political divide. But setting limited objectives may be the only way to build the political coalition necessary to rein in Corporate America, reclaim democracy from the Mc Cutcheon funding nightmare and to return ownership of America to its citizens.

Certainly for those living outside the US, Nader’s initiative seems to present some hope of staving off another generation of endemic global confrontation and to get the agenda back to the real crises of the planet - global warming, escalating environmental crisis and the need to invest in human flourishing in the Developing World. And that now includes a large cross section of the increasingly impoverished and debt-ridden American population itself. Global outcomes now seem to pivot crucially within the domain of US politics - perhaps only for just a brief moment.
The other thing Nader’s Alliance needs to work on is restoring America as the global good guys after the devastation of 'American Exceptionalism' over the past 20 years. The obscenity of the 1 million dead in the illegal Iraq war, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Egypt, Serbia, drone attacks on civilians, Guantanamo, torture, spying on the global population and cynical manipulation of democracy in target countries like Ukraine etc. etc. have made of the US a rogue completely out of control in the eyes of the rest of the world. The international arena is in sore need of a return to the high-minded leadership and moral vision as the US contribution to global community in the past.
It would be black irony indeed if the sustainability of the human project on the planet is scuppered by being forced to sponsor the banks to a second round of bail-out by keeping the global arms industry afloat.

Peter Rose is Professor Emeritus at Rhodes University, South Africa. He is a widely published environmental scientist who has worked intensively in the field of sustainable development and environmental restoration.