Wars and their escalation cause mass destruction of human life accompanied by destruction of the natural world. War preparations bring leaders ever closer to the brink.
The Planet Can’t Survive the Business of War
Tom Englehardt / TomDispatch & David Bromwich / TomDispatch
(August 29, 2023) — The old anti-Vietnam War song that began, “War, what Is It good for? Absolutely nothing!” couldn’t be more on the mark these days. Just imagine that you live on a planet where the truest “war” may be the one we’re waging against nature — and that nature is increasingly waging on us. That “war” could, in the end, simply broil us all.
This summer, the war in Ukraine has finally started to take a backseat to endless headlines about heat waves, fires, floods, and record extreme weather of more or less every sort. As we broil and sweat, as communities are burned down or flooded out, who even notices the latest casualty figures from that other war?
Yes, the New York Times recently reported that, based on the estimates of American officials, an almost unimaginable 500,000 Ukrainians and Russians have already been killed or wounded in that conflict which, despite recent lame peace efforts, shows not the faintest sign of resolving itself any time soon.
In fact, escalation continues to be the rule of the… well, under the circumstances, let’s not say “game.” Russian bombardments of Ukrainian ports and grain storage facilities have worsened recently, while the Ukrainians have begun using — god save us all — American cluster bombs in quantity on the front lines of the war. (The Russians had already been doing so.)
And the latest news is that the Biden administration has once again (as with those cluster munitions and before them Abrams tanks, among other weapons systems) decided to up the ante on the Ukrainian side by allowing Denmark and the Netherlands to provide that country with F-16 fighter planes. And so it seems to go… and go and go and go some more.
As TomDispatch regular David Bromwich suggests all too vividly today, we now find ourselves on a war planet — and whether that war is among humans or with nature, it only seems to be escalating by the month.
War is not a game. No, wait…. it is!
Living on a War Planet And Managing Not to Notice
David Bromowich / TomDispatch
(August 29, 2023) — A new war, a new alibi. When we think about our latest war — the one that began with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, just six months after our Afghan War ended so catastrophically — there is a hidden benefit.
As long as American minds are on Ukraine, we are not thinking about planetary climate disruption. This technique of distraction obeys the familiar mechanism that psychologists have called displacement. An apparently new thought and feeling becomes the substitute for harder thoughts and feelings you very much want to avoid.
Every news story about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s latest demand for American or European weaponry also serves another function: the displacement of a story about, say, the Canadian fires which this summer destroyed a forest wilderness the size of the state of Alabama and 1,000 of which are still burning as this article goes to press.
Of course, there is always the horrific possibility that Ukraine could pass from a “contained” to a nuclear war, as out of control as those Canadian fires. Yet we are regularly assured that the conflict, close to the heart of Europe, is under careful supervision. The war has a neatly framed villain (Vladimir Putin) and — thanks to both the U.S. and NATO — a great many good people containing him. What could possibly go wrong?
A fantasy has taken root among well-meaning liberals. Ukraine, they believe, is the “good war” people like them have been searching for since 1945. “This is our Spain,” young enthusiasts have been heard to say, referring to the Spanish Republican war against fascism. In Ukraine in the early 2020s, unlike Spain in the late 1930s, the Atlantic democracies will not falter but will go on “as long as it takes.” Also, the climate cause will be assisted along the way, since Russia is a large supplier of natural gas and oil, and the world needs to unhook itself from both.
A new war, a new alibi. When we think about our latest war — the one that began with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, just six months after our Afghan War ended so catastrophically — there is a hidden benefit. As long as American minds are on Ukraine, we are not thinking about planetary climate disruption. This technique of distraction obeys the familiar mechanism that psychologists have called displacement. An apparently new thought and feeling becomes the substitute for harder thoughts and feelings you very much want to avoid.
Every news story about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s latest demand for American or European weaponry also serves another function: the displacement of a story about, say, the Canadian fires which this summer destroyed a forest wilderness the size of the state of Alabama and 1,000 of which are still burning as this article goes to press.
Of course, there is always the horrific possibility that Ukraine could pass from a “contained” to a nuclear war, as out of control as those Canadian fires. Yet we are regularly assured that the conflict, close to the heart of Europe, is under careful supervision. The war has a neatly framed villain (Vladimir Putin) and — thanks to both the U.S. and NATO — a great many good people containing him. What could possibly go wrong?
A fantasy has taken root among well-meaning liberals. Ukraine, they believe, is the “good war” people like them have been searching for since 1945. “This is our Spain,” young enthusiasts have been heard to say, referring to the Spanish Republican war against fascism. In Ukraine in the early 2020s, unlike Spain in the late 1930s, the Atlantic democracies will not falter but will go on “as long as it takes.” Also, the climate cause will be assisted along the way, since Russia is a large supplier of natural gas and oil, and the world needs to unhook itself from both.
Copyright 2023 David Bromwich
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