The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 was the most widely known and discussed ‘near miss’ which the world had with a nuclear war in the 20th century. At its peaceful conclusion, several safeguard procedures, or as we now call them, “guard rails,” were put in place to ensure that the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union for control of human destiny would not suddenly escalate to a hot war. A “red line” telephone was set up to ensure that the heads of state could contact one another in case actions of one or the other side could be misconstrued as a nuclear attack. This was famously mocked in the anti-war movie Dr. Strangelove.
Decade by decade, during the last century other procedural safeguards came in the form of treaties on arms limitations and then on reduction of nuclear arsenals, with on-site inspections, all with the intent of raising trust between the two hostile and suspicious sides.
Nonetheless, there were several occasions when it was only the cool head of an officer with power to launch missiles, whether Russian or American, that prevented false radar readings on missile activity of the other side to result in a “preventive” strike, applying the principle of “use them or lose them” with respect to the arsenal under his control. That we made it through the 20th century unscathed may well be considered as “dumb luck” as they say in American English, or “miraculous,” as people with faith in God would say.
In this context, I contend that what happened in the U.S. Congress yesterday was an act of divine intervention to save us from ourselves. The thirty minutes warning time before an incoming ICBM hits or an hours long warning time before a nuclear armed bomber would reach target, as in the case of Dr Strangelove, is a luxury that no longer exists. The existence of nuclear armed intermediate range U.S. missiles at Russia’s borders and hypersonic Russian missiles housed on small surface vessels or submarines in international waters off the shores of the United States, means that the warning time has been cut to five or ten minutes, which is to say, there is no longer a buffer against false alarms and automated launches. If the United States were to continue its escalation policy in Ukraine, aided and abetted by the British and the Germans, with their own newly announced plans for introducing Typhoon jets or TAURUS missiles into the war in Ukraine, then we would have hardly a chance of averting a shift by NATO or by Russia to tactical and then to strategic nuclear weapons, meaning the end of civilization on earth.
Enter Divine intervention.
CNN, EuroNews, the BBC: their broadcasts this morning were all about the vote yesterday in the U.S. House of Representatives to “vacate” the position of the Speaker, meaning the removal of Kevin McCarthy. Specialists on U.S. constitutional law have been given the microphone to explain what the duties and powers of the Speaker are, to tell us how this is unprecedented, the first time in U.S. history that a Speaker has been removed from office. Political analysts have spoken on air at great length on who were the eight who precipitated the vote that brought down the Speaker. They have been described as trouble makers, rabble rousers who want only to obstruct the working of the federal government. Some have taken this line of conduct back to the Tea Party rebels within the Republican Party, and to the later emergence of the most fervent Trump supporters who sought to overthrow the consensus of America’s ruling elites. There is a lot of truth in these characterizations, but they do not consider the positive side to the removal of the House leader and effective shutdown of the legislative branch of government. I will try to address that here.
The most positive element is that it all validates the “checks and balances” notion of governance that was a guiding principle of the nation’s founders. The whole country has been run under successive Democratic administrations as if there is no alternative, as if “checks and balances” were not applicable to those who are the heralds of progressive humanity, meaning themselves. All of those who have disagreed with the Democratic party positions on everything and anything are, in the apt words of candidate Hilary Clinton in 2016 “deplorables.” Well, yesterday the deplorables had their day in court and they won.
Why am I saying all of this in a newsletter that is dedicated to foreign policy issues? Because the net result of the removal of Mr. McCarthy yesterday is to halt for an indefinite time all substantive work to restore to the federal budget the $6 billion or so of the total $24 billion for 2024 that was deleted from the compromise budget bill that passed Congress this past weekend and was signed by the President to finance the working of the federal government for the coming 45 days.
I take “indefinite time” to be rather prolonged, given that the internecine war going on within the Republican party on Capitol Hill is fierce and uncompromising. This creates the real possibility that there will be no stratagem, no dirty trick that Biden and his fellow war criminals in power can turn to continue assistance to Ukraine. Absent this oxygen, the Ukrainian war effort will shut down rather swiftly. Europe will be aghast but is unable to fill in for the missing American contribution.
The irony of these developments is that the Ukrainian war may end for entirely arbitrary reasons within the U.S. power structure. All the efforts of Jeffrey Sachs and John Mearsheimer that brought to the attention of millions of youtube watchers the guilt of the West for this supposedly “unprovoked” war will have played no role in the denouement. Nor will one even be able to say that those in Congress who opposed further aid to Ukraine did so not because they are peace-niks but because they prefer to do battle with China. No, the collapse of support for Ukraine will be attributable to the true collapse of American political culture.
Pundits have spoken for more than a year about the risk of a civil war in the United States because all interest in the art of politics as the art of compromise and search for pragmatism evaporated long ago. The scandalous judicial persecution of Donald Trump to remove him from the electoral race in 2024 has been playing out for all the world to see. The scandalous, shall we say treasonous behavior of the sitting president when he served as vice president under Barack Obama is coming to public attention as the judicial process is applied to his son and collaborator in bribe-taking from the Chinese, Hunter. Many have asked how long this can continue without the system collapsing. Well, friends, it has just collapsed and I say that is a godsend in the literal sense of the word.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023