A Neglected Consequence of Our National Decisions

When we initiate massive undertakings, especially wars which are so emotionally charged, we will weigh many consequences such as world opinion, effect on other counties, even regional balances of power that may result. One we seldom, if ever, consider is the mindset of the American people that may result.

A mindset is a cultural phenomenon. Societies have them as a result of unusual experiences or as a means of accounting for what they do or have done. In this context slavery was a mindset in addition to a practice. When the practice of slavery was abolished the mindset remained, even to this day. Mindsets, being held for reasons usually immune to rational criticism, can be very dangerous to a society. They are vulnerable to political and other manipulation and, more importantly, they prevent a society from productively engaging in solutions to societal problems.

By way of example, let us consider what I believe to be one of, if not the most, significant changes in the American mindset to occur in the 20^th century, the militaristic mindset of the American people. After every major war until World War II America always disarmed and returned its focus to domestic issues. After World War II it did not.

By way of personal experience let me illustrate the depth of disarmament to help in understanding what disarmament meant and hence the magnitude of the change in the American mindset over the period discussed herein. As a child in the 1930s I lived within a few blocks of Fort MacArthur whose mission was to protect the port of Los Angeles from any enemy. The fort had an upper and lower reservation. The lower reservation had the barracks and officer housing. It was open to the public and I, a civilian, got my haircuts there for 25 cents. The upper reservation had the 14 inch disappearing gun battery that could hurl a 1, 560 pound projectile 14 miles in defense of the port. I ran around the tunnels of the gun emplacements and dug bullets from the small arms firing range to melt and make lead soldiers. Additionally, San Pedro was then home port for the Pacific Fleet. When the fleet was in anyone could ride the gigs that transported naval personnel to and from the ships. As youngsters we tried to get a gig going to a battleship, but sometimes wound up disappointed by being delivered to a tender. This was the state of disarmament about 15 years after World War I. There was no effort to keep the public mindset on war.

By the end of World War II the powers that be had already decided that the Soviet Union would probably be our next enemy. Even before the end of the war Churchill had delivered his Iron Curtain speech on March 5, 1945 at Westminster College, in Fulton, Missouri. About the same time Henry Stimson, Secretary of War (it was then called the War Department, not the current euphemistic and deceptive Defense Department) under Truman wrote in his diary that it might be necessary to take on the Russians over their invasion of Manchuria. He said this in connection with the importance of dropping the atom bomb to demonstrate our power to the Russians. In brief, there was no intention to disarm after World War II.

This so-called Cold War produced two hot wars as well as many proxy wars around the globe. For our purposes the most significant of these was the Vietnam War.

The first of these hot wars, Korea, came barely five years after the end of World War II. Fearing the displeasure of an American public that had so recently been through a long war, the Korean War was officially called a police action.

The second, and most important for the purpose of this article, was the Vietnam War. The American defeat in this war was attributed by the military to U.S. civilian opposition to the war, especially to the draft. In consequence the U.S. military sought and won approval to convert itself from a citizen conscript organization to an all volunteer one. This created a military that was considerably less a concern for ordinary Americans who would no longer have to weigh going to war in terms of possibly sacrificing their sons. With this burden off their shoulders the Americans could more easily view war as a kind of video game played with other people's children. This new volunteer military is paid in advanced educational opportunities, medical care for themselves and their families plus a modest salary. We had in effect a paid standing army, which brought us, at least psychologically, one step closer to accepting a full mercenary army whose precursor we now employ for the State Department in Iraq. This has been a major enhancement of the change in the American mindset regarding engagement in war.

During the 1980s we also invaded two small nations. The navy was sent by Reagan to attack the island nation of Granada because it had a socialist government and H. W. Bush sent the army to attack Panama because its leader was said to be trafficking in drugs. These two events were so bizarre they suggest a desire to keep war and "the enemy" in public focus and to discourage any thoughts of challenging the American hegemony in South and Central America.

The next major event in hardening the American appetite for world dominion and the militarism that goes with it was the collapse of the Soviet Union. This left the United States as the oft declared "sole remaining super power." As such, the neocons Cheney et al began planning, during the presidency of H. W. Bush, with their document Project for a New American Century for an American empire to rival Rome in the scope of its dominion. For this a well-funded military would be essential, which I suggest is the real reason we never saw the peace dividend many thought would follow the end of the Cold War.

September the 11th of 2001 came as a godsend for the neocons who had, during H. W. Bush's presidency, laid out their plan for a new American empire analogous to that of Rome in its dominion. An analysis of what was done in rapid sequence after the attack of 9/11 evidences a pre-made plan. It was immediately called a war rather than a police action so the full involvement of the military could be justified. The Patriot Act curtailed civilian freedoms. The federal government was reorganized to facilitate a continuing integration of military and police, and citizens who protest what is going on are now increasingly treated as the enemy.

We are now an empire with over 700 military facilities world wide. Empires generate enemies more readily than almost any other form of political organization. As such, we are continuously on the alert for potential enemies. We are easily led to treat those who may not accept American hegemony as enemies to be dealt with by the military. The latest episode in this world-wide game of containment is our response to China's increasing power. We have moved troops to northern Australia and we are trying to induce Burma to side with us against China.

This whole process from initial reluctance to get involved in one more European war to the creation of an American empire out of the ashes of World War II has had as its backdrop the American mindset nurtured by a media that kept public attention focused on "the enemy." That media and the American people paid far less attention to the efforts of the United Nations to spread some of the global wealth to the world's neediest. We often treated the U.N. as the enemy and any adherence to its rules as anti-American.

One day the full extent of what the Americans and the mindset they developed after World War II have done to this world may be thoroughly articulated. This is now being done with respect to our unnecessary use of the atom bomb. This articulation will not be pretty. It will be filled with large­-scale avarice, pursuit of power and dominance, which became global after World War II. It will have events of unconscionable brutality. We Americans may have to face the kind of collective guilt that Germany has had to deal with. Despite the rhetoric we use to describe ourselves and our motives we have managed to betray our heritage despite many opportunities as our performance on the world stage unfurled. Franklin Roosevelt understood this. During World War II he pushed the creation of the United Nations in which the smallest of nations would finally have a voice. He rejected Churchill's efforts to reestablish the British Empire. He articulated his Four Freedoms, which included a freedom from want and in which the Marshall Plan was rooted. With his death we lost the kind of leadership a nation conceived as was ours requires. We took the first step toward world domination with the dropping of the atom bomb, which to my mind, Roosevelt, with his profound concern for humanity, would never have authorized. Perhaps one of the larger tragedies of the last 300 years is an America, which was conceived with so much promise for humanity, played out as simply one more empire.

Bob Newhard

India, the Other Path

One of the salient issues facing humanity is whether democracy can survive the monumental changes that will engulf it, or will we humans find no other way to continue our existence than to rely on high levels of authoritarianism. As an example, China has slowed its population growth by fiat of authority requiring most families to have only one child. India, a democracy, has made not such demands. As a result India's population will surpass that of China in 2013.

India, in my judgment, should be a focus of interest to those concerned with the future of democracy. It is an emerging economic powerhouse, a global player. On the one hand it is fractured by an addiction to the new, fostered by a robust economy of technology and on the other hand deep attachment to the old as a country with long standing traditions that go far toward being definitive in a country not long out from under the heel of colonialism.

One policy that demonstrates the difference between China's authoritarianism and India's democracy is population control. China mandated a one child per family policy in the 1970s. Exceptions were made for farm families and some others. As a result, according to Chinese authorities, 400 million births have been prevented from 1979 to 2011. A Chinese spokesperson has said that currently about 35.9% of China's population is encompassed by the program. If a woman becomes pregnant and the family already has a child the woman is forced to have an abortion.

India tried a policy of sterilization instead of abortion in the 1970's, but abandoned it in the face of backlash it occasioned. Recently, the Indian state of Rajasthan has begun a policy of voluntary sterilization for men and women. Sterilization is rewarded with various appliances such as food processors or television sets and includes eligibility to win a new Indian-made Tata Nano automobile. In short, and with an adherence to the objectivity that the threats of overpopulation present to the future of our species, we must ask ourselves which of these two approaches is most likely to accomplish the population reduction required.

Another prominent current display of Indian democracy in action is the furor over the government's permitting foreign big box stores such as Wal-Mart and the British Tesco to open stores throughout India. Due to India's particular form of parliamentary government, a decision of this sort can be made by the government without parliamentary discussion or approval. From its independence to 2006 kirana, small mom and pop neighborhood stores, seldom larger than 500 square feet, and including even cart and sidewalk vendors, were by law the primary form of retail operation permitted in India. There are millions of these shops throughout India and, combined, they represent about 15% of India's gross domestic product (GDP). In 2006 large foreign retailers were permitted to operate, but only as suppliers to small Indian-owned stores. By fiat of government order in November 2011, these large foreign retailers were permitted to establish and operate their own supermarkets if they had no more than 51% foreign ownership. The government's action caused an uproar in the Indian Parliament with one parliamentarian declaring that he would personally set fire to the first Wal-Mart store to appear. Within days the ruckus in parliament became so great that the government had to rescind its order; with what degree of permanence is yet to be seen. I find it significant that this revolt in behalf of the little people took place immediately in Parliament without the need for massive demonstrations by those affected kirana owners. Can one imagine this response to government dictate taking place in China?

Part of the argument for permitting this form of foreign investment had been that both China and Thailand had permitted this kind of foreign investment and their economies have boomed. Regardless, the Indians chose tradition rather than modernization. In India's case the people spoke, in China's case a wealth- dominated government decreed that foreign investment would be permitted albeit under government oversight. (We have seen what happened when Google incurred the government's wrath over Google's resistance to China's demand that it censor its content.) One interesting question is which of these two major influences on the world's future, both developing at break neck speed, will, in the long run, be successful? No matter what we may think humanity ought to do, this is the real world in which democracy and authoritarianism will be tested.

I have tried to think out some of the pros and cons of this issue because I believe it reflects a fundament source of conflict in the future of our species. For example, it is said that the big box stores will eliminate many of the middle men in the kirana supply chain and thereby make goods, especially food, cheaper at a time of ever rising prices. But, I ask myself, at what energy and pollution costs as people have to travel further to a big box store rather than their corner kirana. Could, for example, the big box stores, being regional, create an additional impetus to automobile purchase? In brief, does it do less environmental damage and perhaps societal stress, to move people or products? Lest this seem trivial, it is important to keep in mind that we are talking of a society of nearly one billion people, over three times the population of the United States.

Some kirana vendors rely on local food sources more than the big box stores can be expected to. One kirana butcher said he did not fear Wal-Mart because his customers, like most Indians, preferred fresh meat to frozen meat and he slaughtered his own animals, assuring that his meat was fresh. If you have ever noticed, poor people, lacking refrigeration, buy their meat alive, hence the popularity of chicken, and slaughter it immediately prior to cooking. Ecologically, this considerably reduces the energy consumption of refrigeration and the accompanying CO2 pollution. Of additional concern, will the increased advertising and sophistication of that advertising by the big box stores accelerate overconsumption as it has in our country?

There is a significant movement in India to preserve Indian ecology, even to the point of returning to the land. Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Little Things, a prize winning novel, and activist for global social reform, comes close to taking this view in an interview in the Guardian UK newspaper, http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jun/05/arundhati-roy-keep-destabilised-danger. People like she and Bill McKibben are driven to much smaller units of human organization in their search for a viable sustainable economy.

As a final note, I would ask if one can imagine a people-centered economist like India's Nobel Laureate Armartya Sen arising and prospering in China? Sen was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work in rigorously demonstrating that economics can be most productively viewed as a device for improving human life.

China is rigorously, and sometimes callously, planning its future. Humanity is viewed in its depersonalized mass. To get a feel for the enormity of Chinese planning I suggest reading relevant passages from Mike Davis' Planet of the Slums in which he describes Chinese plans for a megalopolis extending from the delta of the Pearl River (Hong King) to the delta of the Yangtze River (Shanghai) with a population equivalent to that of the entire United States. As I say, the Chinese are planning on an enormous scale. India, in contrast, exhibits much of the people-centered decision making. I have asked myself, and continue to ask, which is the most likely scenario for humanity's future? As the watersheds on both sides of the Himalayas continue to shrivel, as their populations continue to increase, as they each pursue a rate of development not seen before, their differing ways of dealing with much the same problems will be highly instructive for those concerned about the future of mankind.

Bob Newhard