U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other members of the Biden Cabinet are fond of proclaiming the “rules-based international order” (RBIO) or “rules-based order” every chance they get: in press conferences, on interviews, in articles, at international fora, for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and cocktails. Along with the terms “human rights” and “democracy,” the RBIO is routinely used to claim a moral high ground against countries that they accuse of not following this RBIO, and wielded as a cudgel to attack, criticize, accuse, and delegitimate countries in their crosshairs as rogue outliers to an international order.

This cudgel is now used most commonly against China and Russia. Oddly enough, whenever the United States asserts this “rules-based order” that China (and other “revisionist powers”/enemy states) are violating, the United States never seems to clarify which “rules” are being violated, but simply releases a miasma of generic accusation, leaving the stench of racism and xenophobia to do the rest.

This is because there is a fundamental contradiction at the heart of the RBIO.

The RBIO isn’t “rules-based,” it isn’t “international,” and it confounds any sense of “order,” let alone justice. It is, at bottom, the naked exercise of U.S. imperial power and supremacy, dressed up in the invisible finery of an embroidered fiction. The RBIO is a fraudulent impersonation of international law and justice.

There are many layers to this misnomer, to be deconstructed piece by piece.

‘RBIO’ in Contrast With ‘International Law’

First, the RBIO is not “international” in any sense of the word.

There actually is a consensual rules-based international order, a compendium of agreed-upon rules and treaties that the international community has negotiated, agreed to, and signed up for. It’s called simply “international law.” This refers to the body of decisions, precedents, agreements, and multilateral treaties held together under the umbrella of the Charter of the United Nations and the multiple institutions, policies, and protocols attached to it. Although imperfect, incomplete, evolving, it still constitutes the legal foundation of the body of international order and the orderly laws that underpin it: this is what constitutes international law. The basic foundation of the UN Charter is national sovereignty—that states have a right to exist, and are equal in relations. This is not what the United States is referring to.

When the United States uses the term RBIO, rather than the existing term “international law,” it does so because it wants to impersonate international law while diverting to a unilateral, invented, fictitious order that it alone creates and decides—often with the complicity of other imperial, Western, and transatlantic states. It also does this because, quite simply, the United States does not want to be constrained by international law and actually is an international scofflaw in many cases.

The United States as International Outlaw

For example, the United States refuses to sign or to ratify foundational international laws and treaties that the vast majority of countries in the world have signed, such as the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), CEDAW (the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women), ICESCR (the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights), CRC (the Convention on the Rights of the Child), ICRMW (the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families), UNCLOS (the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea), PAROS (the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space), the Ottawa Treaty (the Anti-Personnel Landmines Convention), and the majority of labor conventions of the ILO (International Labor Organization). In fact, the United States harbors sweatshops, legalizes child labor (for example, in migrant farm labor), and engages in slave labor (in prisons and immigration detention centers). Even the U.S. State Department’s own 2021 Trafficking in Persons Report acknowledges severe problems in the U.S. of trafficking and forced labor in agriculture, food service, manufacture, domestic service, sex work, and hospitality, with U.S. government officials and military involved in the trafficking of persons domestically and abroad. Ironically, the United States tries to hold other countries accountable to laws that it itself refuses to ratify. For example, the United States tries to assert UNCLOS in the South China Sea while refusing—for decades—to ratify it and ignoring its rules, precedents, and conclusions in its own territorial waters.

There are also a slew of international treaties the United States has signed, but simply violates anyway: examples include the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Biological Weapons Convention, UN treaties prohibiting torture, rendition, and kidnapping, and of course, war of aggression, considered “the supreme international crime”— a crime that the United States engages in routinely at least once a decade, not to mention routine drone attacks, which are in violation of international law. Most recently, the AUKUS agreement signed between the United States and Australia violates the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) by exploiting a blind spot of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

There are also a multitude of treaties that the United States has signed but then arbitrarily withdrawn from anyway. These include the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran, the Agreed Framework and the Six-Party Talks with North Korea, the Geneva Conventions, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, and many others.

There are also approximately 368 treaties signed between the Indigenous nations and the U.S. government; every single one of them has been violated or ignored.

There are also unilateral fictions that the United States has created, such as “Freedom of Navigation Operations” (FONOPs): this is gunboat diplomacy, a military show of force, masquerading as an easement claim. FONOPs are a concept with no basis in international law—“innocent passage” is the accepted law under UNCLOS—and it is the United States and its allies who are violating international laws when they exercise these FONOPs. Air Defense Identification Zones (ADIZs) are likewise notions that have no recognition in international law—the accepted concept is “sovereign airspace”—but the United States routinely claims that China is violating Taiwan’s ADIZ or airspace—which covers three provinces of mainland China. These are some examples of the absurd fictions that the United States invents to assert that enemy states like China are violating the RBIO. This is weaponized fiction.

The United States also takes great pains to undermine international structures and institutions; for example, not liking the decisions of the World Trade Organization (WTO), it has disabled the WTO’s Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism; it has undermined—and threatened—the ICC (by passing the American Servicemembers Protection Act [ASPA], also known as the Hague Invasion Act), and more recently, sanctioned the ICC prosecutor and her family members; it thumbs its nose at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and its decisions, and generally is opposed to any international institution that restricts its unbridled, unilateral exercise of power. Former U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton, in blunt candor, asserted that there is “no such thing as the United Nations,” but this unhinged ideology is quietly manifested in the day-to-day actions of the United States throughout successive U.S. administrations.

Whose Rules? The United States Applies Its Laws Internationally

On the flip side of this disdain for agreed-upon international law and institutions is the United States’ belief that its own laws should have universal jurisdiction.

The United States considers laws passed by its corrupt, plutocratic legislature—hardly international or democratic by any stretch of the imagination—to apply to the rest of the world. These include unilateral sanctions against numerous countries (approximately one-third of the world’s population is impacted by U.S. sanctions), using the instruments of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the U.S. legislature and courts, as well as currency and exchange systems (SWIFT). These unilateral sanctions are a violation of international law and humanitarian law, as well as perversions of common sense and decency—millions have perished under these illegal sanctions. To add insult to injury, the United States routinely bullies other countries to comply with these unilateral sanctions, threatening secondary sanctions against countries and corporations that do not follow these U.S.-imposed illegal sanctions. This is part of the general pattern of the exercise of U.S. long-arm jurisdiction; examples abound: the depraved arrest, imprisonment, and torture of journalist and WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange—an Australian national—for violating U.S. espionage laws; the absurd kidnapping of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou (a Chinese national) on Canadian soil, for violating illegal U.S. sanctions on Iran (which Canada does not itself uphold); and many other examples, too many to enumerate.

This long-arm bullying is often exercised through a network of kangaroo courts within the United States, which arrogate to themselves unitary, plenipotentiary international powers to police the citizens of other countries. Not surprisingly, the United States also applies its own laws in a similarly corrupt way within its own borders, with its own gulag system fed through these kangaroo courts. The most dramatic examples of the corruption of these courts can be noted in the routine exoneration of police-inflicted murders of civilians, except under the most extreme protest and activism; and absurd judgments, such as the prosecution of Steven Donziger by a Chevron-linked corporate law firm; or the exoneration of Kyle Rittenhouse by a judge allowing the accused to run the juror lottery. Note, however, the system itself is set up for conviction: over 99 percent of federal cases that go to court result in conviction; most do not even go to trial: 90 percent of U.S. federal indictments are settled by defendants pleading “guilty” or “no contest” to charges filed against them. The idea that there is any impartial notion of justice is belied by the fact that fair and adequate legal representation is unaffordable for most defendants; that appointed public defenders are so overstretched that they often spend literally minutes on each case, simply counseling defendants to plead guilty—which most do—and individuals, in the rare cases where they do win, are often bankrupted and psychically destroyed by a system that has unlimited resources and finances to beat down its victims. This corrupt system of oppression, despite its obvious injustices and iniquities, is exacerbated within vast gray areas of the justice system where even counsel, appeal, scrutiny, or oversight does not apply, and where a single individual may be judge, jury, and executioner. These include, for example, certain parole and probation systems, review boards within prisons, debt collection systems, immigration proceedings, asset forfeiture systems, and many other quasi-judicial systems of oppression.

Generally, these violations and injustices are excused or erased by the international and national media, which are complicit in maintaining an illusion of impartial, high-standards justice in the United States. This is an illusion without substance: the U.S. legal system, like the U.S. health care system or the U.S. educational system, is essentially a failed system that is designed to work only for the rich and powerful. It delivers substandard, so-called care, if not outright abuse, harm, violence, and death, to the vast majority of people who have the misfortune to enter its sausage-making chambers.

Routine Exemptions, Deadly Disorder

Nevertheless, from time to time, dramatic incidents of the United States flaunting the international “rules-based order”—i.e., international law by the United States—occasionally make headlines (before being rapidly silenced).

One type of recurring violation is the abuse of diplomatic immunity. This type of case is mundane and repetitious: a U.S. (or Western-allied) government employee kills or harms native citizens; the United States immediately claims diplomatic immunity. Sometimes the perpetrator is drunk, out of control, or paranoid; often they are spies or contractors. For example, according to recent reports, Anne Sacoolas seems to have been a drunk U.S. spy who killed a British teenager in 2019. She was spirited away immediately as a diplomat.

Raymond Allen Davis was a U.S. contractor, possibly acting CIA station chief, who shot dead two people in the street in Pakistan. Another person was killed by a vehicle picking up Davis to take him away from the crime scene. Davis was spirited out of the country, no explanations were given, and the murders were erased from media consciousness.

This mindset of exceptionalism and impunity is not anecdotal, but manifests on a general, structural scale in the numerous one-sided U.S. status of forces agreements (SOFAs) in the countries where the United States has troops stationed. These give a blanket immunity similar to diplomatic immunity: the violating U.S. soldier or contractor cannot be arrested and rendered to domestic courts unless the United States chooses to waive immunity; U.S. extraterritorial exemption/immunity can be applied despite cases of murder, mayhem, violence, torture, rape, theft, sexual trafficking, and a host of other sins.

This type of exceptionalism also applies to national health policies and international health regulations. For example, multiple COVID-19 outbreaks have been traced to U.S. violations of domestic public health measures—screening, testing, contract tracing, and isolation—in many territories or countries (especially island regions) where the United States has military bases. For example, several major COVID outbreaks in Okinawa have been traced to U.S. troops entering the island without following local health protocols.

The United States takes the cake for hypocrisy, however, when, in several COVID lawsuits, it accused China—without evidence—of violating UN/World Health Organization (WHO) International Health Regulations by failing to notify the United States and the rest of the world in a timely manner about the outbreak of COVID-19. This is entirely refuted by the facts and the well-established timelines: no other country has worked as assiduously and as rapidly in investigating, ascertaining, and then notifying the world of the initial outbreak, as well as sharing necessary information to control it. The United States, however, has carved out a pandemic-sized exemption from reporting any infectious diseases to the WHO if it deems it necessary for its national security interests. Ironically, this exemption is carved out for the single institution most likely to propagate it—the U.S. military: “any notification that would undermine the ability of the U.S. Armed Forces to operate effectively in pursuit of U.S. national security interests would not be considered practical.”

When the United States disingenuously uses the term RBIO, or rules-based international order, it may be playing at international law, but once its applications are unpacked and defused, it becomes clear that it is a weaponized fiction that the United States uses to attack its enemies and competitors.

If “hypocrisy is a tribute that vice pays to virtue,” the RBIO is the vicious first tribute that the United States sends to its law-abiding opponents to undermine international order, no less dangerous for its falsehood.

Globetrotter via counterpunch.org

Similarly optimistic, if not delusional, remarks of an “agreement in principle” were made this week separately by Mike Pompeo, the U.S.’ top diplomat, as well as Trump’s special envoy on arms control, Marshall Billingslea.

The sanguine posturing by the Trump administration amounts to absurd grandstanding. It’s obvious that with three weeks to the presidential election there is an attempt to inflate the image of Trump into a master deal-maker and hence to score some “good news” for the American people in a bid to boost his re-election ambitions.

What’s going on here is unscrupulous and shabby gimmicking around with the onerous matter of global security. The main issue at hand is the New START accord governing limitations on strategic nuclear weapons. The treaty came into effect in 2011 and is due to expire in February next year, only four months away. It is the last-remaining arms-control treaty between the U.S. and Russia, specifically limiting the number of intercontinental ballistic missiles deployed by either side. Given that the U.S. and Russia together possess over 90 per cent of the world’s total stockpile of these weapons, it is incumbent on both to secure the landmark treaty.

It should be noted that Washington has already abandoned several arms-control treaties: the Anti-Ballistic Missile accord, the INF treaty, the Iran nuclear deal, and the Open Skies Treaty.

However, there is no need for dramatics seen this week from the U.S. side. The New START accord allows for a five-year extension if both sides simply agree to it. The Trump administration seems to be creating an illusion of “breakthrough” in deal-making when all that is required is for both sides to calmly agree to an extension. Russia has consistently advocated for an extension of the New START without preconditions as a bridge towards a longer-term, more comprehensive regime of arms control taking into account new concerns about strategic stability, such as weaponization of space and missile defense systems.

It is the Trump administration which is using the issue of extension as leverage for demanding conditions. It is withholding extension to extract concessions from Russia, such as including China into negotiations (but not American NATO allies) and latterly demanding a freeze on short-range nuclear weapons. It should be noted that there was already a treaty on limiting short-range, or tactical, nuclear warheads – the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) accord, which the Trump administration resiled from last year.

Despite earlier warnings from Russia, as well as from some European and American politicians, that the New START was in danger of falling into obsolescence, the Trump administration had adopted a cavalier indifference towards negotiations. It was only until this summer that the White House began to engage in negotiations to renew the treaty. But even then it became clear that the Americans were playing cheap politics. The opening of bilateral talks in Vienna in June involved a facetious propaganda stunt by U.S. negotiators aimed at shaming China into joining discussions. Such a ridiculous drama and fabrication purporting to show empty Chinese seats at the venue was nevertheless an eye-opener into the lack of professionalism and integrity on the U.S. side as an honest partner.

It is evident that the U.S. side has been using the threat of an arms race as pressure on the Russian side to capitulate to its unilateral demands. Russia has stood firm on its position that it will not sign up to unilateral conditions set by Washington for New START. It is because of unethical and puerile politicking by the U.S. which has resulted in the New START heading for expiry. Global security is gravely being undermined precisely because of American shenanigans.

Democrat contender Joe Biden has indicated that if he is elected to the White House on November 3, he will sign an immediate five-year extension to New START. That may well turn out to be a vote-winner for Biden. But it shouldn’t come down this, whereby global security is being jeopardized because of American bad faith.

A major contemporary talking-point across the globe is the rapid decline in American international standing. There are many ways to illustrate the waning of U.S. power and reputation, from backsliding on international agreements, to the imposition of callous sanctions against stricken nations, to the uncouth squabbling in its so-called presidential debates. But the grubby duplicity and irresponsible conduct of the Trump administration regarding its obligations on nuclear-arms control and global security is a particularly lamentable demonstration of American disgrace.

U.S. envoy Marshall Billingslea is, rather belatedly, making enthusiastic sounds about arms control talks to be held with Russia later this month. The talks are scheduled for June 22 in Vienna. The Kremlin has confirmed the venue and discussions, with deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov representing the Russian side.

On announcing the June 22 meeting with Russia, Billingslea showed an unseemly haste to link the event to the possibility of China also attending. “China also invited. Will China show and negotiate in good faith?” he added.

That sounds odd, if not inappropriate. The talks are supposed to be bilateral efforts by the world’s foremost nuclear powers to get down to serious negotiations on global security. After all, the U.S. and Russia possess over 90 per cent of the world’s total number of warheads. Why the haste by the U.S. side to get China involved at this stage?

The U.S. envoy sounds more like a dodgy salesman than a principled negotiator on arms control. Billingslea’s career history as an accused advocate of torture techniques under President GW Bush and his stint at the Treasury with responsibility for imposing sanctions on other nations does not inspire confidence that he has expertise in arms control issues nor has serious scruples about advancing global peace.

From previous announcements by the Trump administration, it is clear that the real U.S. aim is to use the talks with Russia as a way to rope China into trilateral arms control. This is hardly the spirit of trust and genuine negotiations.

The Trump administration has been abandoning nuclear security treaties with gusto. Last month it walked away from the Open Skies Treaty. In 2018, it ditched the international nuclear accord with Iran, and last year binned the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty. The latter step gravely undermines security architecture in Europe. The American side disingenuously accused Russia of breaching the INF, but it has since become clear that Washington wanted out of that treaty in order to have a free hand to confront China with short and medium-range missiles.

Under Trump, the U.S. has promoted the endeavor to weaponize outer space in violation of an existing United Nations’ treaty.

His administration has also adopted a mercurial, non-committed attitude towards the New START accord governing long-range nuclear warheads. Despite repeated appeals from Moscow for clarity, the U.S. side has demurred on whether it will extend the treaty which is due to expire in February 2021. If START is abandoned – the last remaining arms control treaty – then there is a real danger of a new global arms race being unleashed.

The U.S., it seems, is using veiled threats of leaving New START as a leverage point on Russia to corral China. Such a negotiating ploy shows a reckless, gambling disregard for global security and peace. It also illustrates a total lack of integrity and principle.

For its part, China this week said it has no intention of joining trilateral talks in Vienna. Beijing points out that its nuclear arsenal is a fraction of those belonging to the U.S. and Russia. It is up to Washington and Moscow to first drastically reduce their nuclear inventories before Beijing is obligated to join wider efforts for disarmament.

“We noticed that the United States has been dragging China into the issue…whenever it is raised, with the intention of deviating from its responsibility,” said foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying.

Given the relentless vilification of China by the Trump administration over the Covid-19 pandemic, trade and cybersecurity, Hua rightly added that Washington’s claims to want to negotiate in good faith seem “extremely ridiculous and even surreal”.

Russia’s envoy Sergei Ryabkov has cautiously welcomed the Vienna meeting, but it is noticeable that Moscow is keeping expectations low key. Ryabkov ruled out Moscow being used in any way to put pressure on China to become involved in trilateral discussions. He said Russia “respects” China’s position.

The Russian diplomat also made a valid point about the incongruity of American demands for China to join arms limitations at this stage while the U.S. makes no such demands on its allies, Britain and France. Both of these NATO members have nuclear arsenals of 200-300 warheads, which is approximately the same as China’s. The U.S. and Russia each have a total stockpile of 6,000 warheads, according to a 2019 tally made by the Arms Control Association. If China is to be included in arms limitation negotiations, then why shouldn’t the same obligation be made on Britain and France?

There’s a discernible lack of credibility about the U.S. side in its present approach to global nuclear security. On one hand, it is tearing up treaties, as well as ramping up military forces in Russia’s Arctic region and in the South China Sea. Yet now the other hand is being extended in a supposed willingness to negotiate on arms control with Russia in a bilateral forum which it wants opened up to include China.

In the interests of diplomacy and keeping communication lines open, Russia is participating in the talks in Vienna. Regrettably, however, the words and deeds so far from the Trump administration do not augur well for substantive achievement.

Unfortunately, there is little sign of genuine desire for arms control by the American side. Its conduct is one of pursuing an ulterior agenda and exploiting nuclear fears for its own selfish geopolitical gain regarding China. That’s not a premise for progress.

The Pentagon and national security agencies directed by the White House have also been discussing the viability of engaging in war with those same two global competitors Russia and China, either individually or even simultaneously. Yes, it is true that many countries wargame certain scenarios that are unlikely ever to occur, but there is nevertheless a certain consistency in the bellicosity that comes like an endless stream out of the Trump White House.

Relations with both Moscow and Beijing are the worst they have been since the end of the Cold War. A recent interview with U.S. Special Representative for Syria James Jeffrey revealed that American troops are staying in Syria not to confront ISIS but rather in hopes that Russia will be drawn into a “quagmire.” Meanwhile the U.S. government’s repeated attempts to demonize China for the coronavirus suggest that tension with that country will increase considerably as U.S. elections draw nearer. Both China and Russia have already been accused of planning to interfere in November’s presidential polling.

The Administration policy of intimidation and threats directed against foreign nations over their domestic and international policies has borne bitter fruit, but no one seems capable of halting the slide led by Secretary of State Pompeo and the president into an autocracy that depends on expressions and demonstrations of military power for its survival. Washington recently rejected global calls to suspend all sanctions and aggressive actions while the world struggles with coronavirus. It was the only country to do so, leading to derision from friend and foe alike and emphasizing the isolation of the Trump leadership on the world stage.

Recently the United States was threatening to intercept four Iranian flagged oil tankers that were making their way to Venezuela. The U.S., which has waged economic warfare against both countries by sanctioning oil exports and seriously degrading the standards of living of ordinary citizens, is now seeking to use military resources to enforce its completely illegal rules globally. If Trump wants to light a fire, attacking Iranian ships in international waters to enforce U.S. unilaterally imposed sanctions is a sure way to go about it. Starving Iranians and Venezuelans is in no one’s interest, not even the poohbahs who are in charge in Washington, but they seem to be oblivious to the fact that taking “action” has consequences.

The irony is, of course, that Donald Trump was elected president on a “peace candidate” margin of difference after he pledged that he would be ending “stupid” wars in Asia. Unfortunately, his assurances were little more than copies of the similar pledges made by his two predecessors, both of whom embraced business as usual for America the Exceptional early in their terms of office. Electing three faux peace candidates in a row also revealed that while you cannot fool all the people all the time you can fool most of them frequently enough to wind up in Washington.

And there is other cleverness afoot in an effort to make COVID-19 go away. Pompeo has just announced that the United States will unilaterally withdraw from the so-called Open Skies Treaty which was signed in 1992. Thirty-two signatories were, by its terms, allowed to conduct unarmed confidence building surveillance flights over each others’ territories to ensure that no one was planning a military offensive.

It is the third international security arrangement that Trump has discarded since he took office and the pretext, as in the previous cases, is that the other side is “cheating,” that Russia in particular has blocked overflights of strategic regions and military exercises while also using its flights to collect sensitive information on the United States to plan potential attacks.

America’s NATO allies, also signatories on the treaty, were not informed in advance regarding the White House’s intentions and are reported to be angry because they have found the Treaty a useful tool in maintaining mutually beneficial relations with Russia. Some Democrats and former intelligence official in the U.S. have declared the decision “insane”, both because it ignores the interests of America’s closest allies and because it further damages the prospect for establishing a reasonable modus vivendi with Moscow.

Previously Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) shortly after taking office in 2018 under pressure from his principal donor Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who is a persistent advocate for Israel. His wife Miriam has declared that there should be a new entry to the Hebrew Bible entitled the “Book of Trump.” Iran was in compliance with the agreement and it was beneficial for the United States as it would have denied Tehran the infrastructure needed to produce a nuclear weapon, but Adelson was in favor of attacking Iran, going so far as to recommend that nuclear weapons be used against it.

Trump also subsequently left the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2019, using the same unsubstantiated argument being put forward by Administration hawks currently that Russia was not fully compliant with its terms.

This latest withdrawal suggests that there will be another departure if Trump is reelected. The New START Treaty, the only remaining nuclear-arms-control agreement between the United States and Russia, is set to expire in February 2021. New START was negotiated by the Obama administration, which would render it a prime target for rejection by Trump. It sets a cap on the number of nuclear missile warheads deployed by the United States and Russia, which is certainly to everyone’s benefit, but apparently the White House does not agree.

The trend is clear. Trump and his advisers, most notably Pompeo, are opposed to any international bodies on principle, most particularly if they are not completely supportive of U.S. policies and positions or are able to limit the White House’s freedom of action, up to an including the use of nuclear weapons. Recently Trump has cut off all funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) in spite of the globally significant coronavirus crisis. Last year, Trump cut off funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) refugee program to punish the Palestinians and express his support for the Israelis. Now, the president is clearly opposed to any attempts at arms control and is seeking to dismantle the existing international framework.

“Trump hasn’t started any new wars” say the more cogent of his supporters. That may be true, but he has attacked Syria twice based on phony intelligence and has committed a war crime by assassinating a senior Iranian government official. And he sure has worked hard to elevate constant insults and threats into a major component of U.S. foreign policy while also taking away the international instruments set up to minimize the risks of war. And it will only get worse over the next five months as the White House works desperately to shift the focus away from the fallout from the mishandled coronavirus and towards foreign enemies who will be blamed for everything going wrong in America.

A successor to the Trump administration will have to rebuild the credibility of the Department of Justice and the effectiveness of such regulatory agencies as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Consumer Finance Protection Agency.  It will have to rebuild the intelligence community, which has been heavily politicized, and the Department of State, which has been hallowed out.  Now, you can add the field of arms control and disarmament to the list of reclamation projects because of the hostile and counterproductive acts of the Trump administration.

Every U.S. president since Dwight David Eisenhower has understood the importance of arms control and disarmament, which serves to highlight the ignorance and inexperience of Donald Trump and his key advisers regarding disarmament issues.  Over the past two years, the Trump administration has scuttled the Iran nuclear accord, which brought a measure of predictability to the volatile Middle East, and the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), which destroyed more missiles that any treaty in history.  Now, the Trump administration has walked away from the Open Skies Treaty, which was particularly important to the Baltic states and the East Europeans for monitoring Russian troop movements on their borders.

The treaty itself was first suggested by President Eisenhower in the 1950s as a way to improve the strategic dialogue between the United States and the Soviet Union.  It was ultimately negotiated by President George H.W. Bush and Secretary of State James Baker in 1992 after the collapse of the Soviet Union.  The Trump administration’s claim that the treaty permits surveys of civilian targets in the United States that pose “an unacceptable risk to our national security” is particularly ludicrous.  Information on U.S. infrastructure is publicly available to anyone from Google Earth as well as commercial imagery.

The U.S. withdrawal from the Open Skies Treaty is particularly important as it constitutes another gratuitous setback to the transatlantic security dialogue and as a signal that the United States has no interest in any disarmament dialogue with Russia, including the need for extending the New Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty (New START), the last remaining arms control agreement with Russia.  The New START limits the United States and Russia to 1,550 deployed nuclear missiles each, but the Obama administration had to bow to Republicans to accept a $1.7 trillion nuclear modernization program in order to support the treaty.  And such neoconservatives as Senators Ted Cruz (R/TX) and Tom Cotton (R/AK) are supportive of the Trump administration’s commitment to long-term nuclear modernization that has no place for arms control measures.

For the past several years, Russian President Vladimir Putin has tried to engage the United States in an arms control dialogue to include a pledge to no-first-use of nuclear weapons; no militarization of outer space; and the creation of nuclear-free zones.  The Trump administration has turned its back on all of the Russian initiatives, and the recent creation of a Space Force is one more deterrent to a conciliatory dialogue.  Such a dialogue was the central key to improving relations between Washington and Moscow during the worst days of the Cold War.

Meanwhile, opeds in the New York Times and the Washington Post have defended the Trump administration’s latest salvo against arms control and disarmament, and even suggested that withdrawal from the Open Skies agreement is a “hopeful” sign for Russian-American relations.  Writing in the Post on May 22, David Ignatius, who typically supports administration positions on defense policy, argues that Trump himself favors “more engagement” with Moscow and that the withdrawal from the international treaty is in fact a “tactical tilt toward Russia.”  Ignatius bases that view on the expectation that Trump really wants to draw the Chinese into the disarmament dialogue and, furthermore, that Russia shares that goal.  It is far more likely, in my estimation, that Beijing currently has no interest in being drawn into a three-way dialogue on arms control and that U.S. emphasis on including China in any new strategic arms treaty is in fact a “poison pill” to kill the current strategic arms agreement that expires this winter.

The Times oped, moreover, would have you believe that so-called Russian abuses of the Open Skies accord are actually undermining American security.  Tim Morrison, a Russian hard-liner who formerly served on Trump’s National Security Council, argues that Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and its “invasion” of Syria justify scuttling an agreement that didn’t provide advance warning of such “military adventures.”  He fails to mention that satellites designed to provide such intelligence are not affected by the Open Skies Treaty.  Morrison fails to mention that the real value of the treaty was providing assurance to our European NATO allies regarding Russian troop movements on their borders.  (Morrison also should have mentioned that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad invited the Soviet deployment, which hardly counts as an “invasion.”

President John F. Kennedy ignored the Pentagon’s opposition to the Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963, and even President Ronald Reagan ignored the opposition of Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger and Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle to complete the INF Treaty in 1987.  There are no genuine arms control specialists in the Trump administration, which is staffed by loyalists and anti-Russian hardliners such as Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and the newly appointed arms negotiator Marshall Billingslea.  Once upon a time, the United States had an Arms Control and Disarmament Agency that served as a lobby for disarmament, but President Bill Clinton bowed to right-wing pressure in 1997 and killed the independence of the agency by folding it into the Department of State.  Thus, the rebuilding task for U.S. national security policy will be difficult and time-consuming.

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There is growing concern that the Trump administration will let the last-remaining arms-control treaty fall – the New START (2010) which limits strategic nuclear missiles held by the U.S. and Russia. If it goes, then the world is facing an arms race not seen since the Cold War. It will be open season for nukes.

Into the malign mix are the current heightened tensions between the U.S., NATO, Russia and China. Confrontation could spin out of control with catastrophic consequences for the planet. There is a grim sense that risk of nuclear conflagration is greater than at any time since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis more than half a century ago.

There is strong suspicion that the Trump administration is deliberately playing the mad man as a negotiating tactic. It’s an unconscionable and extremely dangerous gamble with world security, but this would seem to be Trump’s diabolical art of the deal.

What the U.S. president wants is to tie China into arms-control treaties along with Russia. China’s nuclear arsenal is a mere fraction of either the U.S.’s or Russia’s – reckoned at one-twentieth of their combined stockpile. Beijing has stated over and over that it will not enter into arms limitations with the U.S. or Russia until the two nuclear superpowers first make drastic reductions in their number of warheads. That seems reasonable. The onus is on Washington and Moscow to first demonstrate progress on disarmament, as they are obliged to do under the 1970-founded Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Trump has repeatedly indicated possible extension of the New START with Russia, but only if China is brought into a trilateral deal. He therefore seems to be using the threat of an arms race as a way to lever Russia and China into a trilateral accord. But New START is a bilateral treaty between Washington and Moscow. By pushing the trilateral idea to include China, Trump is trying to rewrite the deal with Russia out of Washington’s desire to control Beijing.

Trump is affecting to show that he is prepared to throw away America’s signature – and jeopardize global security – in order to force China to the negotiating table on Washington’s terms.

When the Trump administration walked away from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty last year, it accused Russia of breaching that accord. Moscow denied those claims as unfounded. It later emerged that the real reason for Washington rescinding the 1987 treaty was its desire to deploy short and medium-range missiles against China in its rivalry over Asia-Pacific.

In ditching the INF, the Trump administration is destabilizing European security and putting pressure on Moscow over potential threats from the return of U.S. short and medium-range missiles to European territory.

The ratcheting up of insecurity and the specter of an arms race is Trump’s calculated tactic for bringing China into arms limitations along with Russia. The scrapping of the INF and the threatened abandonment of the New START are all part of the same negotiating ploy. This is not just serial loosening of arms controls for its own sake, but rather as a way to lever both Russia and China. Perhaps, the Trump administration is calculating that it can unnerve Moscow so that the latter will in turn put pressure on Beijing to accept Trump’s “grand bargain”.

The announcement on quitting the Open Skies Treaty (OST) appears to fit into this game plan. The treaty was signed in 1992 and became effective in 2002 with some 35 member nations as signatories, most of them European states. The treaty allows for reconnaissance flights over territories to build trust.

Like the INF treaty, the Trump administration is using alleged violations of the OST by Russia as a pretext to jettison another arms-control accord. Again, the real objective is to create insecurity and latent threats in order to apply pressure on Moscow for concessions. The ultimate prize for the Trump administration and Washington state planners is to maneuver China into trilateral arms control.

When Trump announced the U.S. withdrawal of the Open Skies Treaty, it was done with noticeable ambiguity.

“Russia didn’t adhere to the treaty. So until they adhere, we will pull out, but there’s a very good chance we’ll make a new agreement or do something to put that agreement back together,” said Trump said at a press briefing last week.

His Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also dropped hints at deal-making with Russia while declaring an end to U.S. participation in the OST.

It seems more than coincidence that in the same week, Trump’s envoy on arms control, Marshall Billingslea, made a pointed offer to Moscow of extending the New START – but only if China were brought into a trilateral nuclear limitation treaty.

“We intend to establish a new arms-control regime now precisely to prevent a full-blown arms race. It’s for all of these reasons that President Trump has expressed his strong desire to see China included in future nuclear arms-control agreements,” Billingslea is quoted as saying during a virtual conference at the Hudson Institute. “A three-way arms-control agreement will provide the best way to avoid an unpredictable three-way arms race.”

It might be asked: what is wrong with seeking a trilateral accord on nuclear weapons involving the U.S., Russia and China? Surely, a grand bargain like that might be deemed as making progress towards general nuclear disarmament.

But such rationale is putting the horse before the cart. The U.S. and Russia must first significantly reduce their arsenals as they are obligated to do. Moreover, arms controls and disarmament is all about trust and integrity. Washington is destroying trust and integrity by deliberately creating insecurity in order to achieve its geopolitical objective of controlling China. How can Trump build trust and do a genuine deal when he is doing all he can to kill any trust in a genuine commitment to obtaining international security and peace?

Starting from the presidency of George W. Bush to that of Trump, the U.S. has made some missteps that not only reduce its influence in strategic regions of the world but also its ability to project power and thus impose its will on those unwilling to genuflect appropriately.

Some examples from the recent past will suffice to show how a series of strategic errors have only accelerated the U.S.’s hegemonic decline.

ABM + INF = Hypersonic Supremacy

The decision to invade Afghanistan following the events of September 11, 2001, while declaring an “axis of evil” to be confronted that included nuclear-armed North Korea and budding regional hegemon Iran, can be said to be the reason for many of the most significant strategic problems besetting the U.S..

The U.S. often prefers to disguise its medium- to long-term objectives by focusing on supposedly more immediate and short-term threats. Thus, the U.S.’s withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty) and its deployment of the Aegis Combat System (both sea- and land-based) as part of the NATO missile defense system, was explained as being for the purposes of defending European allies from the threat of Iranian ballistic missiles. This argument held little water as the Iranians had neither the capability nor intent to launch such missiles.

As was immediately clear to most independent analysts as well as to President Putin, the deployment of such offensive systems are only for the purposes of nullifying the Russian Federation’s nuclear-deterrence capability. Obama and Trump faithfully followed in the steps of George W. Bush in placing ABM systems on Russia’s borders, including in Romania and Poland.

Following from Trump’s momentous decision to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty), it is also likely that the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) will also be abandoned, creating more global insecurity with regard to nuclear proliferation.

Moscow was forced to pull out all stops to develop new weapons that would restore the strategic balance, Putin revealing to the world in a speech in 2018 the introduction of hypersonic weapons and other technological breakthroughs that would serve to disabuse Washington of its first-strike fantasies.

Even as Washington’s propaganda refuses to acknowledge the tectonic shifts on the global chessboard occasioned by these technological breakthroughs, sober military assessments acknowledge that the game has fundamentally changed.

There is no defense against such Russian systems as the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle, which serves to restore the deterrence doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD), which in turn serves to ensure that nuclear weapons can never be employed so long as this “balance of terror” exists. Moscow is thus able to ensure peace through strength by showing that it is capable of inflicting a devastating second strike with regard regard for Washington’s vaunted ABM systems.

In addition to ensuring its nuclear second-strike capability, Russia has been forced to develop the most advanced ABM system in the world to fend off Washington’s aggression. This ABM system is integrated into a defensive network that includes the Pantsir, Tor, Buk, S-400 and shortly the devastating S-500 and A-235 missile systems. This combined system is designed to intercept ICBMs as well as any future U.S. hypersonic weapons

The wars of aggression prosecuted by George W. Bush, Obama and Trump have only ended up leaving the U.S. in a position of nuclear inferiority vis-a-vis Russia and China. Moscow has obviously shared some of its technological innovations with its strategic partner, allowing Beijing to also have hypersonic weapons together with ABM systems like the Russian S-400.

No JCPOA? Here Comes Nuclear Iran

In addition to the continued economic and military pressure placed on Iran, one of the most immediate consequences of the U.S. withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, better known as the Iran nuclear deal) has been Tehran being forced to examine all options. Although the country’s leaders and political figures have always claimed that they do not want to develop a nuclear weapon, stating that it is prohibited by Islamic law, I should think that their best course of action would be to follow Pyongyang’s example and acquire a nuclear deterrent to protect themselves from U.S. aggression.

While this suggestion of mine may not correspond with the intentions of leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the protection North Korea enjoys from U.S. aggression as a result of its deterrence capacity may oblige the Iranian leadership to carefully consider the pros and cons of following suit, perhaps choosing to adopt the Israeli stance of nuclear ambiguity or nuclear opacity, where the possession of nuclear weapons is neither confirmed nor denied. While a world free of nuclear weapons would be ideal, their deterrence value cannot be denied, as North Korea’s experience attests.

While Iran does not want war, any pursuit of a nuclear arsenal may guarantee a conflagration in the Middle East. But I have long maintained that the risk of a nuclear war (once nuclear weapons have been acquired) does not exist, with them having a stabilizing rather than destabilizing effect, particularly in a multipolar environment.

Once again, Washington has ended up shooting itself in the foot by inadvertently encouraging one of its geopolitical opponents to behave in the opposite manner intended. Instead of stopping nuclear proliferation in the region, the U.S., by scuppering of the JCPOA, has only encouraged the prospect of nuclear proliferation.

Trump’s short-sightedness in withdrawing from the JCPOA is reminiscent of George W. Bush’s withdrawal from the ABM Treaty. By triggering necessary responses from Moscow and Tehran, Washington’s actions have only ended up leaving it at a disadvantage in certain critical areas relative to its competitors.

The death of Soleimani punctures the myth of the U.S. invincibility

I wrote a couple of articles in the wake of General Soleimani’s death that examined the incident and then considered the profound ramifications of the event in the region.

What seems evident is that Washington appears incapable of appreciating the consequences of its reckless actions. Killing Soleimani was bound to invite an Iranian response; and even if we assume that Trump was not looking for war (I explained why some months ago), it was obvious to any observer that there would be a response from Iran to the U.S.’s terrorist actions.

The response came a few nights later where, for the first time since the Second World War, a U.S. military base was subjected to a rain of missiles (22 missiles each with a 700kg payload). Tehran thereby showed that it possessed the necessary technical, operational and strategic means to obliterate thousands of U.S. and allied personnel within the space of a few minutes if it so wished, with the U.S. would be powerless to stop it.

U.S. Patriot air-defense systems yet again failed to do their job, reprising their failure to defend Saudi oil and gas facilities against a missile attack conducted by Houthis a few months ago.

We thus have confirmation, within the space of a few months, of the inability of the U.S. to protect its troops or allies from Houthi, Hezbollah and Iranian missiles. Trump and his generals would have been reluctant to respond to the Iranian missile attack knowing that any Iranian response would bring about uncontrollable regional conflagration that would devastate U.S. bases as well as oil infrastructure and such cities of U.S. allies as Tel Aviv, Haifa and Dubai.

After demonstrating to the world that U.S. allies in the region are defenseless against missile attacks from even the likes of the Houthis, Iran drove home the point by conducting surgical strikes on two U.S. bases that only highlights the disconnect between the perception of U.S. military invincibility and the reality that would come in the form of a multilayered missile conflict.

Conclusion

Washington’s diplomatic and military decisions in recent years have only brought about a world world that is more hostile to Washington and less inclined to accept its diktats, often being driven instead to acquire the military means to counter Washington’s bullying. Even as the U.S. remains the paramount military power, its ineptitude has resulted in Russia and China surpassing it in some critical areas, such that the U.S. has no chance of defending itself against a nuclear second strike, with even Iran having the means to successfully retaliate against the U.S. in the region.

As I continue to say, Washington’s power largely rests on perception management helped by the make-believe world of Hollywood. The recent missile attacks by Houthis on Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities and the Iranian missile attack a few days ago on U.S. military bases in Iraq (none of which were intercepted) are like Toto drawing back the curtain to reveal Washington’s military vulnerability. No amount of entreaties by Washington to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain will help.

The more aggressive the U.S. becomes, the more it reveals its tactical, operational and strategic limits, which in turn only serves to accelerate its loss of hegemony.

If the U.S. could deliver a nuclear first strike without having to worry about a retaliatory second strike thanks to its ABM systems, then its quest for perpetual unipolarity could possibly be realistic. But Washington’s peer competitors have shown that they have the means to defend themselves against a nuclear first strike by being able to deliver an unstoppable second strike, thereby communicating that the doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD) is here to stay. With that, Washington’s efforts to maintain its status as uncontested global hegemon are futile.

In a region vital to U.S. interests, Washington does not have the operational capacity to stand in the way of Syria’s liberation. When it has attempted to directly impose its will militarily, it has seen as many as 80% of its cruise missiles knocked down or deflected, once again highlighting the divergence between Washington’s Hollywood propaganda and the harsh military reality.

The actions of George W. Bush, Obama and Trump have only served to inadvertently accelerate the world’s transition away from a unipolar world to a multipolar one. As Trump follows in the steps of his predecessors by being aggressive towards Iran, he only serves to weaken the U.S. global position and strengthen that of his opponents.

The move represents a grave assault on existing treaties forbidding the weaponization of space. The NATO announcement is doubly insidious because it gives the appearance of a multilateral acceptance of US attempts to open up the “final frontier” for militarization. A move which is far from acceptable. In fact, illegal, under international law.

Earlier this year, Donald Trump unveiled a new branch of the US armed forces, Space Command, separate from the Air Force. “Spacecom will defend America’s vital interests in space, the next war-fighting domain, and I think that’s pretty obvious to everybody. It’s all about space,” said Trump at a White House ceremony.

It is the first time that a new branch of the US armed forces has been created since 1947 when US Air Force was created out of the Army. The other existing armed services are the Marine Corps, Navy and Coast Guard. Legislation is currently going through Congress which will authorize the president’s order for setting up the new branch, to be known henceforth as Space Force.

All this is happening with barely any public debate or scrutiny. Even though it represents a dramatic escalation of military dimensions. To the existing domains of land, air and sea the United States under Trump is pushing ahead for weaponization of space. As the “war-fighting” rationale of the president makes clear, the development is explicitly about leveraging new military strike potential.

US weaponization of space has been underway for decades, going back to the “star wars” initiative of the Reagan administration in the 1980s and during the GW Bush presidency in the 2000s. However, Trump is taking the program to a whole new level by implementing a separate dedicated Space Force.

This is in spite of the existing UN-ratified 1967 Outer Space Treaty which prohibits any introduction of weapons, including nuclear weapons, into space.

“States shall not place nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit or on celestial bodies or station them in outer space in any other manner,” reads the treaty, which provides the basic legal framework for international space law.

Russia and China have been consistently strong advocates for upholding the treaty.

Yet proponents of the US Space Force routinely claim that America is being threatened by Russian and Chinese advances in space military technology. It is not clear on what basis these American claims are made.

Republican Alabama Representative Mike Rogers is quoted by Space News as saying: “We have allowed China and Russia to become our peers, not our near peers and that’s unacceptable.”

But like so many other US claims about Russia and China supposedly threatening American interests, there is little or no evidence presented. The claims rely on ideological prejudice and/or a cynical lobbying service for the military-industrial complex. Going into space will convey billion-dollar contracts to US aerospace corporations.

Indeed, there is a resonance with US claims made in the 1950s and 60s of a “missile gap” which alleged back then that the Soviet Union was outpacing America’s arsenal of strategic nuclear weapons. The putative missile gap was invoked as a pretext for greatly expanding the US arsenal, thereby creating an international arms race, only for the so-called missile gap to be found out years later to be a fiction of American scaremongering. Cynically, that fiction was deliberately propagated to the American public in order to provide a tax-payer-funded pork-barrel production line for the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex.

The same process seems to be underway with Trump’s much-vaunted Space Force.

There is another strategic aspect to this American “weaponization of the heavens”. That is, to force Russia and China into an arms race which Washington calculates would be economically ruinous for Moscow and Beijing. What’s at stake here is a pivotal struggle between Russia and China’s vision of a multipolar world and Washington’s desire to be the globe’s hegemonic uni-power. If the US can break Russia and China economically then it wins this era-defining struggle. Launching an arms race is Washington’s gambit for taking down Russia and China.

The precedent is the arms race in the 1980s under Reagan which brought the Soviet Union to collapse. Because of Washington’s presumed right to print endless amounts of dollars and rack up seemingly limitless national debt, the US is waging that it will be the last man standing in an arms race with Russia and China.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said that Russia will not fall into the trap of unleashing an arms race. At a recent meeting in Sochi with his top defense officials, Putin emphasized the imperative need to focus on efficiency in weapon systems. Russia’s latest-generation of hypersonic missiles which apparently can evade any US defense shield – despite the latter costing trillions of dollars to develop – is one example.

Nevertheless, if – and it is a big if – the US manages to develop space weaponry, the pressure will be on Russia and China to respond in kind to counter a whole new threat level. That would mean both nations diverting resources into another realm of weaponry instead of developing their economies.

The US Space Force has to be seen in the wider context of Washington unravelling the entire system of global arms controls. The US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty in 2002 was followed by its withdrawal from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty last year. The Trump administration is moving towards scrapping New START in 2021, the third and last nuclear-arms control treaty.

There is an unconscionable effort by US governments over many years to incite a new arms race. Going into outer space is part of that effort. It is a gross violation of international law and the United Nations by the US to open up a new frontier for military dominance. And the US has utilized the 29-nation NATO alliance to rubber-stamp its criminal weaponization of space.

Hypersonic weapons close in on their targets at a minimum speed of Mach 5, five times the speed of sound or 3,836.4 miles an hour. They are among the latest entrants in an arms competition that has embroiled the United States for generations, first with the Soviet Union, today with China and Russia. Pentagon officials tout the potential of such weaponry and the largest arms manufacturers are totally gung-ho on the subject. No surprise there. They stand to make staggering sums from building them, especially given the chronic “cost overruns” of such defense contracts — $163 billion in the far-from-rare case of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

Voices within the military-industrial complex — the Defense Department; mega-defense companies like Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, Boeing, and Raytheon; hawkish armchair strategists in Washington-based think tanks and universities; and legislators from places that depend on arms production for jobs — insist that these are must-have weapons. Their refrain: unless we build and deploy them soon we could suffer a devastating attack from Russia and China.

The opposition to this powerful ensemble’s doomsday logic is, as always, feeble.

The (Il)logic of Arms Races

Hypersonic weapons are just the most recent manifestation of the urge to engage in an “arms race,” even if, as a sports metaphor, it couldn’t be more off base. Take, for instance, a bike or foot race. Each has a beginning, a stipulated distance, and an end, as well as a goal: crossing the finish line ahead of your rivals. In theory, an arms race should at least have a starting point, but in practice, it’s usually remarkably hard to pin down, making for interminable disputes about who really started us down this path. Historians, for instance, are still writing (and arguing) about the roots of the arms race that culminated in World War I.

The arms version of a sports race lacks a purpose (apart from the perpetuation of a competition fueled by an endless action-reaction sequence). The participants just keep at it, possessed by worst-case thinking, suspicion, and fear, sentiments sustained by bureaucracies whose budgets and political clout often depend on military spending, companies that rake in the big bucks selling the weaponry, and a priesthood of professional threat inflators who merchandise themselves as “security experts.”

While finish lines (other than the finishing of most life on this planet) are seldom in sight, arms control treaties can, at least, decelerate and muffle the intensity of arms races. But at least so far, they’ve never ended them and they themselves survive only as long as the signatories want them to. Recall President George W. Bush’s scuttling of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Trump administration’s exit from the Cold War-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in August. Similarly, the New START accord, which covered long-range nuclear weapons and was signed by Russia and the United States in 2010, will be up for renewal in 2021 and its future, should Donald Trump be reelected, is uncertain at best. Apart from the fragility built into such treaties, new vistas for arms competition inevitably emerge — or, more precisely, are created. Hypersonic weapons are just the latest example.

Arms races, though waged in the name of national security, invariably create yet more insecurity. Imagine two adversaries neither of whom knows what new weapon the other will field. So both just keep building new ones. That gets expensive. And such spending only increases the number of threats. Since the end of the Cold War in 1991, U.S. military spending has consistently and substantially exceeded  China’s and Russia’s combined. But can you name a government that imagines more threats on more fronts than ours? This endless enumeration of new vulnerabilities isn’t a form of paranoia. It’s meant to keep arms races humming and the money flowing into military (and military-industrial) coffers.

One-Dimensional National Security

Such arms races come from the narrow, militarized definition of “national security” that prevails inside the defense and intelligence establishment, as well as in think tanks, universities, and the most influential mass media. Their underlying assumptions are rarely challenged, which only adds to their power. We’re told that we must produce a particular weapon (price tag be damned!), because if we don’t, the enemy will and that will imperil us all.

Such a view of security is by now so deeply entrenched in Washington — shared by Republicans and Democrats alike — that alternatives are invariably derided as naïve or quixotic. As it happens, both of those adjectives would be more appropriate descriptors for the predominant national security paradigm, detached as it is from what really makes most Americans feel insecure.

Consider a few examples.

Unlike in the first three decades after World War II, since 1979 the average U.S. hourly wage, adjusted for inflation, has increased by a pitiful amount, despite substantial increases in worker productivity. Unsurprisingly, those on the higher rungs of the wage ladder (to say nothing of those at the top) have made most of the gains, creating a sharp increase in wage inequality. (If you consider net total household wealth rather than income alone, the share of the top 1% increased from 30% to 39% between 1989 and 2016, while that of the bottom 90% dropped from 33% to 23%.)

Because of sluggish wage growth many workers find it hard to land jobs that pay enough to cover basic life expenses even when, as now, unemployment is low (3.6% this year compared to 8% in 2013). Meanwhile, millions earning low wages, particularly single mothers who want to work, struggle to find affordable childcare — not surprising considering that in 10 states and the District of Columbia the annual cost of such care exceeded $10,000 last year; and that, in 28 states, childcare centers charged more than the cost of tuition and fees at four-year public colleges.

Workers trapped in low-wage jobs are also hard-pressed to cover unanticipated expenses. In 2018, the “median household” banked only $11,700, and households with incomes in the bottom 20% had, on average, only $8,790 in savings; 29% of them, $1,000 or less. (For the wealthiest 1% of households, the median figure was $2.5 million.) Forty-four percent of American families would be unable to cover emergency-related expenses in excess of $400 without borrowing money or selling some of their belongings.

That, in turn, means many Americans can’t adequately cover periods of extended unemployment or illness, even when unemployment benefits are added in. Then there’s the burden of medical bills. The percentage of uninsured adults has risen from 10.9% to 13.7% since 2016 and often your medical insurance is tied to your job — lose it and you lose your coverage — not to speak of the high deductibles imposed by many medical insurance policies. (Out-of-pocket medical expenses have, in fact, increased fourfold since 2007 and now average $1,300 a year.)

Or, speaking of insecurity, consider the epidemic in opioid-related fatalities (400,000 people since 1999), or suicides (47,173 in 2017 alone), or murders involving firearms (14,542 in that same year). Child poverty? The U.S. rate was higher than that of 32 of the 36 other economically developed countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Now ask yourself this: how often do you hear our politicians or pundits use a definition of “national security” that includes any of these daily forms of American insecurity? Admittedly, progressive politicians do speak about the economic pressures millions of Americans face, but never as part of a discussion of national security.

Politicians who portray themselves as “budget hawks” flaunt the label, but their outrage over “irresponsible” or “wasteful” spending seldom extends to a national security budget that currently exceeds $1 trillion. Hawks claim that the country must spend as much as it does because it has a worldwide military presence and a plethora of defense commitments. That presumes, however, that both are essential for American security when sensible and less extravagant alternatives are on offer.

In that context, let’s return to the “race” for hypersonic weapons.

Faster Than a Speeding Bullet

Although the foundation for today’s hypersonic weaponry was laid decades ago, the pace of progress has been slow because of daunting technical challenges. Developing materials like composite ceramics capable of withstanding the intense heat to which such weapons will be exposed during flight leads the list. In recent years, though, countries have stepped up their games hoping to deploy hypersonic armaments rapidly, something Russia has already begun to do.

China, Russia, and the United States lead the hypersonic arms race, but others  including Britain, France, Germany, India, and Japan – have joined in (and more undoubtedly will do so). Each has its own list of dire scenarios against which hypersonic weapons will supposedly protect them and military missions for which they see such armaments as ideal. In other words, a new round in an arms race aimed at Armageddon is already well underway.

There are two variants of hypersonic weapons, which can both be equipped with conventional or nuclear warheads and can also demolish their targets through sheer speed and force of impact, or kinetic energy. “Boost-glide vehicles” (HGVs) are lofted skyward on ballistic missiles or aircraft. Separated from their transporter, they then hurtle through the atmosphere, pulled toward their target by gravity, while picking up momentum along the way. Unlike ballistic missiles, which generally fly most of the way in a parabolic trajectory — think of an inverted U — ranging in altitude from nearly 400 to nearly 750 miles high, HGVs stay low, maxing out about 62 miles up. The combination of their hypersonic speed and lower altitude shortens the journey, while theoretically flummoxing radars and defenses designed to track and intercept ballistic missile warheads (which means another kind of arms race still to come).

By contrast, hypersonic cruise missiles (HCMs) resemble pilotless aircraft, propelled from start to finish by an on-board engine. They are, however, lighter than standard cruise missiles because they use “scramjet” technology.  Rather than carrying liquid oxygen tanks, the missile “breathes” in outside air that passes through it at supersonic speed, its oxygen combining with the missile’s hydrogen fuel. The resulting combustion generates extreme heat, propelling the missile toward its target. HCMs fly even lower than HGVs, below 100,000 feet, which makes identifying and destroying them harder yet.

Weapons are categorized as hypersonic when they can reach a speed of at least Mach 5, but versions that travel much faster are in the works. A Chinese HGV, launched by the Dong Feng (East Wind) DF-ZF ballistic missile, reportedly registered a speed of up to Mach 10 during tests, which began in 2014. Russia’s Kh-47M2 Kinzhal, or “Dagger,” launched from a bomber or interceptor, can reportedly also reach a speed of Mach 10. Lockheed Martin’s AGM-183A Advanced Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW), an HGV that was first test-launched from a B-52 bomber this year, can apparently reach the staggering speed of Mach 20.

And yet it’s not just the speed and flight trajectory of hypersonic weapons that will make them so hard to track and intercept. They can also maneuver as they race toward their targets. Unsurprisingly, efforts to develop defenses against them, using low-orbit sensors, microwave technology, and “directed energy” have already begun. The Trump administration’s plans for a new Space Force that will put sensors and interceptors into space cite the threat of hypersonic missiles. Even so, critics have slammed the initiative for being poorly funded.

Putting aside the technical complexities of building defenses against hypersonic weapons, the American decision to withdraw from the ABM Treaty and develop missile-defense systems influenced Russia’s decision to develop hypersonic weapons capable of penetrating such defenses. These are meant to ensure that Russia’s nuclear forces will continue to serve as a credible deterrent against a nuclear first strike on that country.

The Trio Takes the Lead

China, Russia, and the United States are, of course, leading the hypersonic race to hell. China tested a medium-range new missile, the DF-17 in late 2017, and used an HGV specifically designed to be launched by it. The following year, that country tested its rocket-launched Xing Kong-2 (Starry Sky-2), a “wave rider,” which gains momentum by surfing the shockwaves it produces. In addition to its Kinzhal, Russia successfully tested the Avangard HGV in 2018. The SS-19 ballistic missile that launched it will eventually be replaced by the R-28 Samrat. Its hypersonic cruise missile, the Tsirkon, designed to be launched from a ship or submarine, has also been tested several times since 2015. Russia’s hypersonic program has had its failures – so has ours — but there’s no doubting Moscow’s seriousness about pursuing such weaponry.

Though it’s common to read that both Russia and China are significantly ahead in this arms race, the United States has been no laggard. It’s been interested in such weaponry — specifically HGVs – since the early years of this century. The Air Force awarded Boeing and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne a contract to develop the hypersonic X-51A WaveRider scramjet in 2004. Its first flight test — which failed (creating something of a pattern) – took place in 2010.

Today, the Army, Navy, and Air Force are moving ahead with major hypersonic weapons programs. For instance, the Air Force test-launched its ARRW from a B-52 bomber as part of its Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon (HCSW) this June; the Navy tested an HGV in 2017 to further its Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) initiative; and the Army tested its own version of such a weapon in 2011 and 2014 to move its Advanced Hypersonic Weapon (AHW) program forward. The depth of the Pentagon’s commitment to hypersonic weapons became evident in 2018 when it decided to combine the Navy’s CPS, the Air Force’s HCSW, and the Army’s AHW to advance the Conventional Prompt Global Strike Program (CPGS), which seeks to build the capability to hit targets worldwide in under 60 minutes.

That’s not all. The Center for Public Integrity’s R. Jeffrey Smith reports that Congress passed a bill last year requiring the United States to have operational hypersonic weapons by late 2022. President’s Trump’s 2020 Pentagon budget request included $2.6 billion to support their development. Smith expects the annual investment to reach $5 billion by the mid-2020s.

That will certainly happen if officials like Michael Griffin, the Pentagon’s undersecretary for research and engineering, have their way. Speaking at the McAleese and Credit Suisse Defense Programs conference in March 2018, he listed hypersonic weapons as his “highest technical priority,” adding, “I’m sorry for everybody out there who champions some other high priority… But there has to be a first and hypersonics is my first.” The big defense contractors share his enthusiasm. No wonder last December the National Defense Industrial Association, an outfit that lobbies for defense contractors, played host to Griffin and Patrick Shanahan (then the deputy secretary of defense), for the initial meeting of what it called the “Hypersonic Community of Influence.”

Cassandra Or Pollyanna?

We are, in other words, in a familiar place. Advances in technology have prepared the ground for a new phase of the arms race. Driving it, once again, is fear among the leading powers that their rivals will gain an advantage, this time in hypersonic weapons. What then? In a crisis, a state that gained such an advantage might, they warn, attack an adversary’s nuclear forces, military bases, airfields, warships, missile defenses, and command-and-control networks from great distances with stunning speed.

Such nightmarish scenario-building could simply be dismissed as wild-eyed speculation, but the more states think about, plan, and build weaponry along these lines, the greater the danger that a crisis could spiral into a hypersonic war once such weaponry was widely deployed. Imagine a crisis in the South China Sea in which the United States and China both have functional hypersonic weapons: China sees them as a means of blocking advancing American forces; the United States, as a means to destroy the very hypersonic arms China could use to achieve that objective. Both know this, so the decision of one or the other to fire first could come all too easily. Or, now that the INF Treaty has died, imagine a crisis in Europe involving the United States and Russia after both sides have deployed numerous intermediate-range hypersonic cruise missiles on the continent.

Some wonks say, in effect, Relax, hi-tech defenses against hypersonic weapons will be built, so crises like these won’t spin out of control. They seem to forget that defensive military innovations inevitably lead to offensive ones designed to negate them. Hypersonic weapons won’t prove to be the exception.

So, in a world of national (in)security, the new arms race is on. Buckle up.

tomdispatch.com

Of course since Trump thinks grabbing some Greenland is a good idea the Mainstream Media must immediately denounce it even if they are not quite sure how to do so. It seems that the primary form of poo-pooing the idea is to loudly imply that since it is an unusual idea, it must therefore somehow be impossible. Essentially their logic is that since large territories are not bought and sold on a regular basis then it should be somehow absurd for Trump to think he could do this. Apparently many of these American “journalists” forget that The Donald is President of a country that bought Alaska and a huge part of its territory from the French. America looks the way it does today on a map partially due to large land purchases from foreign powers. Everyone who passes 2nd grade social studies in the US should know this.

There is another argument that since Greenland is already populated by people that makes it impossible to buy from Denmark. This talking point makes no sense as the Louisiana Purchase’s territory (although sparsely populated) was nowhere near being devoid of people (same with Alaska) both native and of European origin. So, is there US historical precedent for buying large pieces of land from foreign governments – yes. Therefore, theoretically it should be possible to do again. This is nothing new, just something not done on a massive scale for many generations.

So it is possible to buy Greenland, but the question is why even bother? It is cold, isolated, relatively far from the rest of America and has seemingly little to offer economically.

Well first off if you look at a globe, parts of Greenland are as close to Moscow as a few NATO member states like Portugal and Spain. In face Greenland kind of sits nicely between the Land of Opportunity and the Snow Bad Guys.

We shouldn’t forget that Trump has been critical of NATO from the beginning of his campaign and continues to be so. He also chose to get the US out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. The President seems open to a bit of defense restructuring and Greenland could be a good “launching pad” for a different US military strategy in a post-NATO and renegotiated INF Treaty world.

Europe is starting to get uppity and taking complete and total control of Greenland is a lot easier than taking territory on the continent. Even if Denmark protests, (which they are) it is very hard to say “no” to the United States in the long term and very bad for your health. If the US is willing to openly threaten NATO member Turkey with sanctions for daring (as a sovereign nation) to buy tech from the Russians, then one could imagine that the Danes could be easily made to suffer for not giving up their very large future US Air Force Base for some nice beads and a few empty promises.

Greenland also offers the fact that it is sitting on lots of lovely natural resources that would allow America to dig for what it wants instead of possibly buying it from Moscow. The purchase of the island is a win-win for America’s future from both a Hard Power and Economic Soft Power perspective. Trump is a businessman first and he can obviously see the logic in grabbing the “means of production” rather than just buying from a foreign power that sometimes challenges the US.

Many would argue that the 50,000 inhabitants of Greenland would either protest or just not accept being bought. This is true, there would be mass protests and the populace wouldn’t approve of this, but so what? What can they do about it? They can march around with signs all the want, it will change nothing. The Lakota Indians have been begging and protesting for independence (as have Hawaiians) for some time, and how’s that going for them?

The Mainstream Media won’t cover the inevitable protests thus the “poor Greenlanders” narrative will never come into the global consciousness and their pleas will be heard only by God. The Russians will probably send two reporters to shoot a very official documentary movie about them, that the world will ignore, because some White celebrity is wearing dreadlocks and that is harmful to somebody somehow.

Furthermore, Greenland is a poor location, the US could simply bribe the entire populace with $10,000 each for a total sum of $500,000,000, which in terms of Washington’s budget is peanuts. Hearts and minds have to be won but often they can just be bought. Materialism is one of the greatest means of repression we have ever known, it simply works so a little bribery and the promise of nice roads should work to coerce the population, it certainly did in Eastern Europe in the 90’s,

If Trump can make or force the deal, taking Greenland would be a massive win for the future of America.

• It would give America access to resources freeing it from having to buy them from Russia.
• It would block any further (alleged) developments on the territory by the Chinese.
• It would give America an expendable piece of territory just as close to Moscow as some NATO member states, which could be critical when/if NATO dissolves.
• The island has a tiny population. Assimilating millions takes time, but providing for and assimilating 50,000 humans is no problem whatsoever for the USA.
• Bribing the locas into submission would be cheap, and Greenland is far away enough to stay off the Mainstream Media radar. What happens in Greenland stays in Greenland, so no uprising could occur no matter what the US buys or does there.
• What can Denmark do to resist other than stalling till a more mainstream US President comes to power?

“Make America Great Again” is Trump’s slogan on his red hat and when nations are at their “greatest” they are more often than not – expanding. Those 50 perfectly organized stars on the flag were getting boring anyways.