According to Nicholas Schmidle, New Yorker Magazine staff
writer (Trump's Pentagon tries to move on from the war on terror, Jan.
19, 2018), U.S. foreign policy advisors expressed a new alarm in 2014
when Russia annexed Crimea and occupied Ukrainian territory. The problem,
as described by Phillip Breedlove, then the "top U.S. general in
Europe," was that, "All eyes were on ISIS all the
time."
According to Breedlove and other Pentagon policy-makers, since 9/11 the U.S. has to some extent wasted time concentrating on terrorism while the nation-state system has been chugging along, so that now superpower nation-states are challenging us as in days of old.
We learn that U.S. military policy is changing in response. The latest National Defense Strategy report asserts: "Inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in U.S. national security," with China and Russia "principal priorities." Schmidle quotes an official who describes the current Pentagon view as, "Real men fight real wars. We like the clarity of big wars."
Leaving aside the question of what kind of wars real women fight, we can only wonder what "clarity" to expect.
Will it be the clarity of chess, in which one knows who the enemy is and where (s)he lives, or the clarity of an emotional state that focuses all hate, love, fear, desire, uncertainty, panic and despair on one state or people? We're screwed either way.
I close with a short essay on World War I:
What caused World War I?
On a clear summer day, June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, arrived in Sarajevo. Waiting for him was Gavrilo Princip, one of a group of six assassins, members of the Serbian Black Hand Society, which sought independence from the Empire.
At the same time, throughout Europe and the Americas, people were desperately lonely. They could not relate to each other by talking or having sex or cooperating in the workplace. Of course, talking and sex and working together took place, but people felt an emotional vacuum during the activities.
When the Archduke was assassinated, newspapers called for revenge and honor. The empty place inside people yearned for this conflict because no one has time to be lonely when they are busy killing and being killed. Male loneliness in particular might be assuaged because, as many vets have testified, camaraderie in battle surpasses any other.
When the lonely people were sold on the idea that there would be no more loneliness during a major war, they showered support on their governments and young men enlisted. Four years later, 18 million people were dead and, presumably, no longer lonely.
Further reading:
Point Counter Point, by Aldous Huxley.
Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization, by Nicholson Baker
