Weary of War

Violence around the world has been popping up a lot lately.

 Estimates put the death toll in Syria over 100,000 that makes it the most deadly global conflict at the moment; as deadly in the past 4 years as Iraqi violence in the last 10 years. Negotiations around the civil war in Syria seem to be going nowhere. Some accounts suggest that the negotiations were never more than a charade by the Assad government in the first place.  

Iraqi violence had a significant increase in 2013 with around 10,000 known casualties. Although the end of 2013 and the beginning of 2014 show some signs of decline in violence Iraq’s irregular periodic up ticks and down swings makes it hard to predict.

 Violence in the streets in Ukraine has led to the toppling of the government and as I write this the Ukrainian president and sections of parliamentary are resigning in mass. There is uncertainty about what is next.

 Venezuela is experiencing violence in street demonstrations started by an extreme right wing and responded to by pro-government groups. It is unlikely that this situation will evolve into a situation like the Ukraine much less the civil war in Syria but one never knows. 

Africa has 15 countries involved in wars or post war conflicts.  

American drones recently hit a wedding party in Yemen killing 12 people. American drones terrorizing the northeastern Pakistani tribal regions controlled by Taliban has led to Taliban leaders refusing to allow immunization programs to continue in one of the last places on earth still plagued by polio. Between the drones and the refusal to permit immunization this should be considered biological warfare.

 This week the UN commission of inquiry on human rights in the DPRK reported their finding of crimes against humanity in North Korea spelling out the violence that the North Korean government has been inflicting on their own population.

In spite of this outline of political violence in the world there are some small hopeful signs. However weekly symbolic North Korea recently allowed a small group of North Koreans to meet with their long separated South Korean relatives. Negotiations around Iranian nuclear development between Iran and the US lead “West” continue to move at pace. On Valentine ’s Day countries of the non-aligned movement called for a target date to be set for the elimination of nuclear weapons. On that same day women around the world participated in a day of mass action called 1 billion women rising which is a protest of violence against women.

But let’s return to the various conflicts around the world. Among these conflicts there is imperial attacks, civil wars , street fights, acts of self-defense,  violence propagated by terrorist groups and bands of thugs (who is a thug or terrorist and what is self-defense may depend on your political perspective). There are conflicts that drag on for years and violence that may be over by the time you read this. Syria has a high death count.  I hope the number killed in Venezuela will remain single digit.

The reasons for these violent conflicts are up for debate: Economics, and the control of resources, religious beliefs, and religious feuds, historical conflicts, political order, political liberty, national pride and political alliances, ideology or class conflicts? Depending on the conflict any one or several of these issues may be at the root.

From a distance I could condemn all of this violence as pointless, and immoral.  Fortunately I believe that more and more people everywhere are growing critical of political violence.  But I want to emphasize the uncertainty and ineffectualness of political violence.

Let’s just look at the Ukraine, with push from Russia, Ukraine’s president Yanukovych decided to crack down on the protesters, they fought back and the crises of legitimacy grew too great so that just a few days later Yanukovych and much of his government resigned and have fled.  Now there is a political vacuum and the forces that might fill it are sometimes opposing factions. If the country leans too far to the west some observers say this could lead to drawn out military conflicts with Russia.

The Syrian Civil war is a struggle for a country with at least three different political tendencies, and regardless of who “wins” as the country is torn apart everyone loses.  The longer the war goes on the harder it becomes to forgive and make peace.

Presumably the North Korean leadership even with Kim Jong Un, the new supreme leader has still concluded that torture, abduction, public killings, planned food withholding and prisoner work camps (all findings of the UN commission) is a way to move forward in the world or perhaps it’s just their desperate strategy for holding onto power.  

Behind the violence in Venezuela some people see US puppeteers; with US history in Latin America this wouldn’t be entirely surprising. Whatever the final results of this violence, likely political fall-out from this street violence will be further fuel for the anti-Chaves anti-Maduro propaganda machine. Engagement in the violence from either the government or its supporters only hurts its cause.  

“Well meaning” American drones are (surprise) fueling anti-American sentiments and helps to prop up the Taliban while increasing political instability in Pakistan and Yemen.

It would be nice if I could claim that the non-violent  “Orange Revolution” of  Ukraine created a fully democratic government that was responsive to the aspirations of its people even 10 years later. 

I wish I could look to the results of the Arab Spring and see clearly that its nonviolent campaigns produced the fruits that its participants were trying to cultivate. While the case can be made for that kind of success in Tunisia, Egypt has swung from nonviolent success, to electoral counter revolution, to military counter revolution each swing seeming to take the Egyptian people further from the society that the original revolution sought.

Things would be easier if Venezuela hadn’t already experienced at least one coup attempt since Hugo Chavez was first elected, if there weren’t forces actively working to overturn Venezuela’s political efforts at economic fairness.

Building a better world is often one step forward one step back and repeat. Wishes don’t always come true, things aren’t always easy. 

Maybe there are times when violence makes sense in moving forward some important political program or goal.  I don’t know how one knows when it’s one of those times.

From my perspective, even with its uncertain results, non-violence holds better promise.  I would much rather be in Egypt than Syria. The science of non-violence deserves deeper research. Even just negotiations whether with a government, a terrorist group or a political opposition hold more promises than turning to force. You might ask, “how can you negotiate with them?” My response is “could talking really be worse than coming in shooting?”

International political assassination and its ramifications.

The Roman emperors had to be quite careful to protect themselves from assassination. Assassination was how power politics was conducted in those days. Thanks to illustrious American technology and the glory of American foreign-policy vision, those days are back again. Of course at first assassination by drones hid in the shadows. Now it has been championed by the assistant to the president for homeland security and counter terrorism, John Brennan. In a speech that perhaps should be called the Obama doctrine Brennen presents what he considers to be an ethical justification for the use of drones in killing identified “terrorists”and others who happen to get in the way. His many arguments are at best weak and sloppy and I will not spend time here critiquing each of them. I'm sure others will do an adequate job of that. I want to however pick up on one point, that of precedent.

Brennan states “The United States is the first nation to regularly conduct strikes using remotely piloted aircraft in an armed conflict.  Other nations also possess this technology.  Many more nations are seeking it, and more will succeed in acquiring it. . . . we are establishing precedents that other nations may follow,”

Exactly Mr. Brennan. Let us imagine that an enemy of the United States, a nation, or an organization that the United States is waging war on got a hold of this snazzy technology. Let us imagine that they followed the US precedent. Their targets would be American leaders. The president would no doubt be at the top of the list. Certainly a case could be made by such an enemy that congressional leader funding or promoting the war against them were fair targets. There is nothing in the US drone policy or practice that would prevent this if the shoe were on the other foot.

The American war machine is ugly, and I won't feel more sympathy for the loss of the lives of its American architects and perpetrators then I feel for the innocent Pakistanis or Yemenites who end up as collateral damage to American drone. In fact if drones in the hands of America's enemies ended up killing America's foreign-policy elite one could certainly see this as no more than the chickens coming home to roost. But the political elite know how to share the pain.

The first time a drone kills in America, no doubt someone will be caught unaware, probably the president, although perhaps it will be a second-level politician someone in Congress, the Secretary of State, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or the head of the CIA. Then the security will begin to ramp up. If you think the patriot act is bad, imagine the legislation that will pass after an assassination of a significant American political figure. Further erosion of our civil liberties, further militarization of our society, more fear and paranoia.

Americans will pull out technology against technology, and I don't know where in this arms race will end. Perhaps we will eventually all have our own little assassin bugs that can seek out and kill anyone we wish with no way of detecting who was operating it. I for one can imagine some pretty dystopic futures based on the premise that in war assassination is legitimate and that new technology allows us to do it more precisely and efficiently.

 Okay, ultimately I take issue with the premise that any warfare is legitimate, and I have mixed feelings about efforts to make war "nice". Nonetheless we do have an option. We don't have to go down this road. Drones could be banned by international law in the same way that atomic, biological and chemical warfare has been banned. I suspect that if there were a president who could promote and achieve such a treaty it might be someone like Obama. Here is a great tragedy, because Obama is not about to push for such a treaty. He likes his robotic planes.

We need not new technology, but a new mindset.