Perhaps of interest. As a co-signer to this, I would only add to this point: “Moreover, decades of colossal military spending have witnessed few strategic gains for the U.S. Our military, often saluted as the world’s greatest by politicians, hasn’t won a major war since World War II,” this point; "because wars of offensive aggression, as opposed to wars of defense, inevitably are “unwinnable,” at least in the “long run.” As far more astute than so many junior officers, and senior officers like Westmoreland and Adm. Sharp, General Weyand understood immediately upon the initiation of the Vietnam War that it was “unwinnable," for the same reasons Afghanistan and Iraq were. With Desert Storm a military operation to expel Iraq from Kuwait, which it succeeded at, until it was apparent that it was in fact merely Stage I, of a longer war to fundamentally change the Mideast with the imposition of U.S. military hegemony over the entire region. I know, I was part of the military buildup after the war ended, as the 321st MMC which I was part of prepositioned military stockages in preparation for Stage II of the “U.S. Global Pacification War” which Cheney, Wolfowitz, Libby, and Zalmay Khalilzad were creating a Doctrine for while I was still sitting in Dammam the summer of 1991; having been there since the beginning of the previous October. And getting ticked off about it, as were my fellow unit members. So that finally, the unit left a contingent behind in Khobar Towers, coordinating the massive US military buildup in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, with the rest of the unit carrying on the mission from Baton Rouge. With me landing at the Army Reserve Reading Training Center at Fort McCoy for a while, until leaving active duty to go to law school. Fortunately, the ARRTC had a good military library in which I could immerse myself during the week when I was away from my family, as I had earlier at Camp Pendleton as an enlisted Marine, and would later at the Pentagon as a JAG Officer, so that when I eventually would do advanced Officer Education, I was far advanced beyond their readings already. And the “long run for us, began at the end of 1945 after the WW II re-set.” Picking up where the Republican Presidents had left off in 1932 with a resurgence of “Small Wars” as elemental to "Conservative Cold War Strategy,” as three Republican Presidents had presided over in Latin America, 1921-1932, as they had pre-WW I under Teddy Roosevelt and Taft (Wilson, as a “Southern Democrat” with their long-held Confederate dreams of military takeovers in Latin America wasn’t innocent in this, though he did resist entering WW I as long as possible, up against Republican demands that he enter WW I immediately! ). With an “Ideology of the Offensive,” quickly brought into bipartisan US foreign policy, until taken over in an even more aggressive form as “Conservatism” and an earlier 1950’s “New Right,” and becoming the “Conservative Movement” with its incessantly war promoting media platform “National Review.” That, while in its "Traditional Conservative” formation period under the editorship of James Burnham, Willmoore Kendall, and Bill Buckley, with their “Ideology of the Offensive,” renamed for tactical rhetorical purposes: Conservatism. The file below on Bernhardi reveals the actual ideology of the U.S. today, and of the aforementioned, with the other two files complementing that with additional information which is relevant to today’s American “Ideology of the Offensive,” and our “Perpetual War,” as was celebrated as such until that cognitive war meme proved counter-productive, eventually, for domestic political purposes. And a candidate was “elected" by Sheldon Adelson, Charles Koch, and Peter Thiel, Military Industrial Complex Oligarchs all, but with a duplicitous campaign messaging that he would “End the Endless Wars,” while simultaneously promising to restore torture as US policy, and make the US military the “Greatest Ever.” Which, since “torture as policy” never actually went away, he succeeded on all counts. And provoked wars in the regions which he had begun them with his “War Preparedness” operations, to include the usual US subversive preparation in all domains of warfare. |
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Introduction.pdf
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Bernhardi- Pages from 2. Classical Theories.pdf
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1. Military Bias and Offensive Strategy.pdf
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Military and Foreign Policy Experts Open Letter on U.S. Diplomatic MalpracticeDoes America inspire the world by the power of its example or the example of its power? Far too often, and despite President Joe Biden’s words during his inaugural address, America’s overmilitarized power and diplomatic malpractice are its examples to the world. We must change that. To make America truly essential and indispensable, we must not remain the world’s leading arms maker and weapons exporter. We must instead become the world’s greatest and most committed peacemaker and diplomat. The problem is that America continues to make war, continues being “essential” only as the world’s leading merchant of death, and continues seeking dominance through military supremacy that ends, in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and earlier in Vietnam, in mass death and colossal folly. In our first open letter last spring in The New York Times, we, the undersigned, argued that a thoroughly militarized U.S. foreign policy would generate ruinous and worsening consequences and increasingly limited options for the U.S. and the world. Recent events bear this out. The results of U.S. diplomatic malpractice are cruelly displayed in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific. Risks of further escalation and a world war are rising. Predictably, a militarized foreign policy characterized by rejecting or ignoring international laws and treaties and by disingenuous negotiations and talks has offered no solutions to volatile wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East while making war more likely in the Indo-Pacific. Militarized solutions breed and feed more war. Earnest and deliberate diplomacy is the best hope to bring peace, stability and reconciliation to the world. War in UkraineThe failure to pursue diplomacy in Eastern Europe, both before and after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has resulted in a costly and destructive stalemate for which there are two likely futures:
Horizontal escalation sees the war extending further to civilian population centers and infrastructure and includes the possibility of other nations joining the conflict. Vertical escalation sees the expansion of arsenals to weapons of greater range, lethality, and consequence, including nuclear weapons. These two forms of escalation may be intertwined and reinforcing. So, as the war may expand horizontally to resemble The War of Cities between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s, it may expand vertically as well with more powerful weapons being introduced by both sides. The use of nuclear weapons is increasingly conceivable under these conditions. These two likely futures may intersect. For example, a Ukrainian collapse could see NATO forces, likely Polish and Romanian, marching into western and central Ukraine to counter a Russian push to fill a collapsing Ukrainian state. Such an event could lead to a war between NATO and Russia, a war that conceivably could go nuclear. Hamas, Israel and the Middle EastThe Russia-Ukraine War now rages concurrently with the war between Hamas and Israel. This war, too, is born of a U.S. refusal to foster diplomacy. Unlike the conventional war between Russia and Ukraine, we are witnessing an asymmetrical conflict more akin to the wars of insurgency many of us experienced in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Worse, the Hamas/Israel bloodletting in Gaza is characterized by an ethnic cleansing campaign that would be impossible without U.S. diplomatic, economic, media, military and political support. We are disgusted by and find repugnant the brazen and bipartisan support by the U.S. government for rampant violations of international law by Israel. Ethnic cleansing in Gaza, long planned by senior members of the Israeli government and powerful elements of Israel’s reactionary right wing, follows in the ghastly wake of Hamas atrocities against civilians on October 7. Here, the U.S. government isn’t just passively witnessing war crimes; it is enabling them. With the frightening possibility of escalation to a regional or even a world war, the violence in Gaza has fed and feasted upon decades of deliberate diplomatic malpractice in America. Decades of putting Israel first, second, and last while ignoring the plight and pleas of Palestinians have made political settlements to the blockade of Gaza and the occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank nearly impossible. Whereas a month ago, we lived with the risk of nuclear war as an outcome of escalating conflict in Ukraine, we now face the elevated risk of a rightfully feared world war as a consequence of entangling alliances between nuclear-armed Moscow and Washington in the Middle East. China and the Path AheadTo this, we must add the dangers of war with China, something hyped by leading U.S. politicians; the still unpaid costs of the $8 trillion wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; a militarized federal budget for which 60% of discretionary spending goes to war and all its wounds; and a hollowed American economy. Decades of reckless U.S. war-making, both direct and via proxies, while coddling corrupt, ruthless, and unjust foreign governments has, not surprisingly, made the world more dangerous and less stable. Failure to invest in and maintain our country has weakened and corroded America’s infrastructure, institutions, and industries. A hypocritical flaunting of international law and an espousal of an ethereal rules-based order, coupled with an arrogant disregard for past U.S. crimes and blunders, have caused dozens of nations to flock to competitors – a movement away from America that will undoubtedly accelerate if we remain on our current militaristic path. Moreover, decades of colossal military spending have witnessed few strategic gains for the U.S. Our military, often saluted as the world’s greatest by politicians, hasn’t won a major war since World War II. That same military annually faces significant recruiting shortfalls that cast considerable doubt on the integrity and staying power of the All-Volunteer Force. America’s legacy of failed wars is not redeemed by ongoing displays of vacuous military boosterism. Feel-good patriotism can’t suppress the bitterness many of us military veterans feel toward the past, nor does it calm the worries we have about our nation’s future. Pope Francis has spoken of a “famine of peace” that exists in the world today. In this spirit, we call for immediate ceasefires, without conditions, in Gaza and Ukraine. The surest way to prevent wars from exploding into uncontainable wildfires is to starve them of fuel. To think or speak that these conflagrations can be managed, adjusted as if by damper or thermostat, is a fool’s conceit or a liar’s word. We have been burned too many times in our professional lives to believe hot wars can be “won” by throwing more gasoline on them, whether rhetorically or in the form of cluster munitions, depleted uranium shells, and similar forms of “aid.” A better path ahead is clear. Peace, not war, must be fostered. In embracing peace through diplomacy conducted in good faith, America would indeed exhibit the power of its example, becoming essential to a world that cries out for liberty and justice for all. SIGNERSDennis Fritz Director, Eisenhower Media Network; Command Chief Master Sergeant, US Air Force (retired) Matthew Hoh Associate Director, Eisenhower Media Network; Former Marine Corps officer, and State and Defense official Dennis Laich Major General, US Army (retired) Lawrence B. Wilkerson Colonel, US Army (retired) Ann Wright Colonel, US Army (retired) and former U.S. diplomat William J. Astore Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Air Force (retired) Karen Kwiatkowski Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Air Force (retired) Coleen Rowley Special Agent, FBI (retired) Christian Sorensen Former Arabic linguist, U.S. Air Force Todd E. Pierce Major, Judge Advocate, U.S. Army (retired) Click here for Expert Fellows’ biographies. Read our original letter published in the New York Times, explaining how solutions to current and future conflicts require America lead the world in peacemaking and diplomacy. This tweet ab |