"Two different motives make men fight one another: hostile feelings and hostile intentions. Our definition is based on the latter, since it is the universal element. Even the most savage, almost instinctive, passion of hatred cannot be conceived as existing without hostile intent; but hostile intentions are often unaccompanied by any sort of hostile feelings-at least by none that predominate. Savage peoples are ruled by passion, civilized peoples by the mind. The difference, however, lies not in the respective natures of savagery and civilization, but in their attendant circumstances, institutions, and so forth. The difference, therefore, does not operate in every case, but it does in most of them. Even the most civilized of peoples, in short, can be fired with passionate hatred for each other.
Consequently, it would be an obvious fallacy to imagine war between civilized peoples as resulting merely from a rational act on the part of their governments and to conceive of war as gradually ridding itself of passion, so that in the end one would never really need to use the physical impact of the fighting forces--comparative figures of their strength would be enough. That would be a kind of war by algebra.
Theorists were already beginning to think along such lines when the recent wars taught them a lesson. If war is an act of force, the emotions cannot fail to be involved. War may not spring from them, but they will still affect it to some degree, and the extent to which they do so will depend not on the level of civilization but on how important the conflicting interests are and on how long their conflict lasts.
The thesis, then, must be repeated: war is an act of force, and there is no logical limit to the application of that force. Each side, therefore, compels its opponent to follow suit; a reciprocal action is started which must lead, in theory, to extremes. This is the first case of interaction and the first "extreme" we meet with."
On Mar 31, 2023, at 4:37 PM, Edward Hughes <edwhughes@gmail.com> wrote:Hi Mr Pierce - thank you for the note but apparently it is about a different email chain. My comment, in response to Mr Doctorow's discovery that Russia may use nuclear weapons, is that deploying nuclear weapons when traditional military means are insufficient to achieve political goals has been part of Russia's strategic posture since Putin took office in 2000. I doubt that is the Fox News position, but I wouldn't know because I don't watch it.Regards,On Fri, Mar 31, 2023 at 12:26 PM Todd Pierce <todd.e.pierce@icloud.com> wrote:Thank you for your FoxNews response here, Mr. Hughes. But as a retired Army JAG Officer, who served (serve) as a Guantanamo Defense Attorney which made me curious of how it was that the U.S. so readily adopted a genuinely “Fascist” form of “legal jurisprudence” upon 9/11, I was compelled to study “Political Theory” in the program where Hannah Arendt once taught after I retired, so I earned a M.A. in Politics (Theory) which included history courses on historical Imperialism. Which along with Bill Polk’s mentorship in International Relations, gave me an extensive and more expansive understanding of U.S. foreign policy than the typical college graduate.As I continue to audit foreign policy/Law graduate classes at the Univ. of Minn., I can attest to the ignorance of graduate students on any foreign policy knowledge beyond “American Exceptionalism Myth!”So as a courtesy to someone I assume is a "youngster," and therefore unaware of U.S. Strategic Theory, as articulated most notably by Thomas Schelling during the Cold War, and how absolutely ruthless that was, but made "respectable" by the Conservative Movement out of which Trumpism evolved, with Schelling's “Operational Code” continuously U.S. policy, without break, to the present, I share some information on that below. Beginning with West Point’s celebration of Schelling, the inspiration for “Dr. Strangelove,” though that goes unmentioned here:Quote: "Moreover, he was one of the intellectual fathers of strategic deterrence. While the subject has virtually disappeared from policymakers’ discourse on national security and playbooks on military planning, that does not mean that his ideas are not still applicable in a world that is vastly different than the Cold War era."and,“The power to hurt is bargaining power,” Schelling wrote. “To exploit it is diplomacy, vicious diplomacy, but diplomacy.” A glance around the globe would suggest American bargaining power is dwindling because today’s adversaries no longer subscribe to the same cost–benefit philosophy of our previous enemies, who arguably were more rational. As an Israeli military specialist told The Economist, “Deterrence needs an address.”
Now we’ve given it an “address,” or more correctly, two addresses: Moscow, and Beijing, as we always intended during, and since, the end of the Cold War, as “announced” as the "Cheney/Wolfowitz Doctrine.” But to give “credit” where truly it is due, call it the Kendall/Burnham Doctrine, as first publicly articulated on the pages of National Review magazine as the founding of the “Conservative Movement” by disgruntled CIA officers. “Disgruntled” as they denounced the Eisenhower administration for only “containing” the USSR when it should be “rolling it back.” While suppressing harshly any dissent to that policy, as their proxy Joe McCarthy called for. With Burnham’s and Kendall’s (and the “Bills,” Buckley and Casey) fantasist schemes of military conquest of the world, which they sold to a gullible public, as “Conservatism.” Especially in the beginning to the Republicans who had its own “tradition” of extreme militarism/imperialism going back at least to the 1890s, whose elected President, Eisenhower, they denounced as too much of an “appeaser.” With that “brain infection” eventually including virtually all of the Republican Party and increasingly, more and more of the Democrats, by way of Barry Goldwater, and his influence on his ideological colleague and friend in the Democrats, Scoop Jackson. With Goldwater’s SSCI mentoree now in the WH.
But this is the kind of blatant obtuseness I would expect from the USMA and authors with their backgrounds:"Deterrence is also about resolve. As Schelling tells us, it is all about divining one’s intentions, not only those of the enemy but our own, which in turn shape the adversary’s. “Nations,” he wrote, “have been known to bluff; they have also been known to make threats sincerely and change their minds when the chips are down.” The single biggest challenge we face is our inability to read our adversaries’ intentions—from Russia’s weaponization of cyber-espionage to China’s militarization of man-made islands in the disputed South China Sea.”That highlighted sentence is never applied to understanding how it has been our “intentions” as the “World’s Sole Superpower,” fully revealed with our War of Aggression against Iraq in 2003, and openly written of how that wasn’t the limit of our “appetite for conquest" (see PNAC), as an article Chas shared a few days ago explained in re Iraq, which have “shaped our (so-called) adversary’s" intentions.Which if we had minds to think and eyes to see, it would be clear to us, that our global “intentions,” with Iraq as the beginning, were fully revealed as identical to this: https://read.gov/aesop/063.htmlBut like the proverbial “Good German,” we refuse to see our “true nature.” Every day, if we read “critically,” we can see our “National Security State” media, such as Defense News, reveals our “War Preparedness” (a beloved concept to the Republicans going back to their constant incitement of getting the US into WW I, immediately, with their promotion of “War Preparedness Doctrine,” which eventually prevailed, as bi-partisan policy, as it has today), beginning as persistent "war incitement.” Now having escalated into the next “phase” of the war against “Russia/China, already “kinetic” on the part of the U.S. against Russia, as Trump set in motion with his escalation of “War Preparedness” against Russia/China, with massive increases in military spending, creation of Space Force (getting the “high ground), and encirclement of each (remember USMC Gen. Bergers “War Against the Blob, in the Indo-Pacific :-)But here is some material on U.S. “Strategic Theory,” or “Operational Code,” for those who are ignorant of their U.S. government’s means of aggression. Which when you know this, you can no longer be a “Good German,” meaning someone deliberately/intentionally ignorant of the war crimes their government commits.
Cheerleading versus shivers down your spine: what will the coming Ukrainian counter-offensive bring?
To be sure, there are, among readers of my essays, a certain number of cheerleaders for the Russian side in the ongoing war in and over Ukraine. Some are keenly interested in the facts and the risks that each escalation in the conflict brings with it. Others, like Paul Craig Roberts and his followers, also readers of my work, are often quite ignorant about Russia and have no sincere interest in that country, any more than the Washington elites rooting for Ukraine care about the realities or the fate of that country. These folks are playing the Grand Chessboard, and their logic is ‘you cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs,’ by which I mean that the losses of the combatant sides are merely collateral damage in a much needed realignment of the World Order that takes America down from its pedestal. Quite apart from the cynicism that underlies such position-taking, it ignores that we may all become ‘collateral damage’ if one or the other combatant side miscalculates and touches off a nuclear war.
Meanwhile, I see that both Scott Ritter and Col. Douglas Macgregor continue their cheerleading of Russian forces with daily predictions of a rout of the Ukrainian army. They are both talking nonsense, and bring their fake news to very large Western audiences. Why do I say nonsense? Because no one really knows what the situation on the ground will be when the Ukrainians launch their counter offensive next month.
Both sides have imposed strictest secrecy on their current operations and plans for the coming couple of months. Though the Russians continue to make progress in their capture of Bakhmut and Avdievka, there is little movement elsewhere on the very long front. Both sides are engaged in minor sorties to find out weak spots in the defenses of the other side for purposes of the big battle to come.
In the past few days, Zelensky has played down the Ukrainian military potential for the purpose of squeezing more and more aid from the West and to make the possible Ukrainian breakthrough during the counter offensive appear all the more remarkable if it indeed occurs.
The Russians have been digging in, literally, with spades to fortify their defensive positions in a series of lines. The Russians are nervous over what the USA and NATO actually have dispatched to Ukraine, which they believe may be much more advanced than what the newspaper accounts are saying. Forget the tanks, which are a side show. The real threat is long range ballistic missiles and other weaponry that can reach into the supply depots, regional command centers and barracks of reservists in Crimea and the Russian oblasts bordering the Donbas.
Should Russian fears, which we hear set out in some detail on the daily talk shows these days, be justified and not merely a message to their own leadership to take maximum precautions and not to be giddy with success, then you and I should be very, very nervous. Why? Because if the United States indeed goes va banque and throws in as a further guarantee of success NATO piloted aircraft and battalions of infantry, then the possibility of Russians resorting to tactical nukes raises its head.
For some time now John Mearsheimer has been warning of the Russians resorting to nuclear weapons if they are too heavily pressed in the Ukraine war. I had been resisting his logic by pointing to the unique new conventional weapons like the hypersonic missiles that the Russians have largely been holding back until now but could throw into the battle if needed. After all, in principle, the Russians are fully capable of decapitating the Ukrainian political and military leadership by precision strikes on Kiev at any time of their choosing. However, that may itself be as risky in terms of relations with the USA and NATO as a nuclear strike in the field would be, and it would leave no one with whom to negotiate an end to the war.
And so, sadly and reluctantly, I take back my words about the impossibility of Russian use of nuclear weapons in the field. I have done this privately in a letter to Professor Mearsheimer. Now I do so publicly.
If US assistance to the Ukrainian counteroffensive goes over the top, we may all become collateral casualties of war, both here in Europe and on the mythically secure shores across the Atlantic.
For all of these reasons, I repeat the argument of the Appeal drafted by European Parliament deputies and published here a week ago: this war must end NOW, and imposing a cease-fire is the most urgent task of international diplomacy.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023
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