The former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev finally emerges as the hero of this story. Nowhere quoted, however, is the Gorbachev who, between 2004 and 2018, contributed eight op-eds to the New York Times, the sixth of which focused on climate change and the eighth on the perilous renewal of a nuclear arms race. Gorbachev was deeply troubled by George W. Bush's decision to withdraw from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty (which Putin called a "mistake") and Donald Trump's similar decision to pull out of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Does anyone doubt that Gorbachev would have been equally disturbed by the Biden administration's virtual severance of diplomatic relations with Russia?
In an October 25, 2018, op-ed, Gorbachev summed up the American tendency throughout the preceding two decades: "The United States has in effect taken the initiative in destroying the entire system of international treaties and accords that served as the underlying foundation for peace and security following World War II." Notice that the bellicose American "initiative" began well before the ascent of Vladimir Putin and, according to Gorbachev, it possessed like the expansion of NATO a dynamism that operated independently of developments inside Russia.
Return to Earth
The major news of the summer, besides the apparent lack of success of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, has been Russia's sudden cancellation of the Black Sea grain deal a decision prompted in some measure by a July 17th Ukrainian drone attack on the Kerch Bridge. This is the bridge that has served to connect Russia to Crimea, after the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014; and the drone strike was part of a continuing Ukrainian-NATO effort to undermine by sanctions, among other means Russia's export of its own grain. A typical Western media report about these developments in the Washington Post declined to associate the two events; as if the Ukrainian attack had occurred by coincidence just "hours before" the Russian termination of the deal and its own attacks on Ukrainian grain storage facilities. The events are referred to as "twin developments," and that is all.
In a recent article at TomDispatch, Michael Klare recalled the public shame that never properly attached to U.S. energy companies for "choosing to perpetuate practices known to accelerate climate change and global devastation. Among the most egregious, the decision of top executives of the ExxonMobil Corporation the world's largest and wealthiest privately-owned oil company to continue pumping oil and gas for endless decades after their scientists warned them about the risks of global warming."
Such environmental indifference, as Klare rightly notes, persisted long after the reality of climate disruption was recognized by the polluters. No less irresponsible has been the choice to perpetuate the war habit even as we recognize the inseparable role wars have always played in the destruction of the planet. The Ukraine war was launched by Russia in an exertion of brutal short-term opportunism, but it was also provoked by the United States as one of a long series of wars and regime-change operations that were meant to give the U.S. uncontested leadership of a unipolar world.
All of us now inhabit a war planet threatened in other devastating ways as well. Our escape will not be achieved through a new "norms-based" international order in which NATO, with the U.S. at the helm, replaces the United Nations as the global authority presiding over war and peace. The "next war on the horizon," whether in the Baltic Sea, the Persian Gulf, or Taiwan, is a matter of grave interest to the citizens on all those horizons who may want anything but to serve as its field of exercise. Meanwhile, the lesson for the United States should be simple enough: the survival of the planet cannot wait for the world's last superpower to complete our endless business of war.
Copyright 2023 David Bromwich
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