JUNE 12, 2018
If more proof was needed to
persuade anyone that the Democrats are indeed a war party, it was provided when
Senator Chuck Schumer and other Democrat leaders in the Senate engaged in a
cynical stunt to stake out a position to the right of John Bolton on the summit
between Trump
and Kim Jong Un.
The Democrats asserted that
the planned summit could only be judged successful if the North Koreans agreed
to dismantle and remove all their nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons,
end all production and enrichment of uranium, dismantle its nuclear weapons
infrastructure, and suspend ballistic missile tests.
Those demands would constitute
an unconditional surrender on the part of the North Korean leadership and will
not happen, and the Democrats know it.
But as problematic as those
demands are, here is the real problem that again demonstrates the bi-partisan
commitment to war that has been at the center of U.S. imperial policies: If
these are the outcomes that must be achieved for the meeting to be judged a
success, not only does it raise the bar beyond the level any serious person
believes possible, it gives the Trump administration the ideological cover to
move toward war. The inevitable failure to force the North Koreans to surrender
essentially forecloses all other options other than military conflict.
This is a reckless and cynical
game that provides more proof that neither party has the maturity and foresight
to lead.
Both capitalist parties
support the use and deployment of militarism, repression and war, but somehow –
even though the historic record reveals the opposite – the Democratic party has
managed to be perceived as less likely to support the war agenda than
Republicans. That perception must be challenged directly.
The Democrats have had a long
and sordid history connected to North Korea, and every other imperialist war
that the U.S. has waged since the end of the Second World War. It was the
policies of Democrat president Truman that divided the Korean peninsula and led
to the brutal colonial war waged by U.S. forces. Conflict with Korea was valuable
for Truman and his party advisors who were committed to re-militarizing the
U.S. economy, and they needed the justification that the Korean war gave them.
Truman tripled the military budget and established the framework for the
network of U.S foreign bases that would eventually cover the world over the
next few decades.
The bipartisan commitment to
full spectrum dominance continues with no real opposition from the Democratic
party-connected “resistance.” Even the Poor Peoples’ Campaign (PPC) that was
launched in May and purports to be an independent moral movement still dances
around the issue of naming the parties and interests responsible for the “moral
failures” of the U.S.
On the other hand, the
Revolutionary Action Committee, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee,
the student- and youth-led anti-war movement and eventually Dr. King clearly
identified the bi-partisan commitment to the Vietnam war. What Dr. King and the
activists in the 1960s understood was that in order to be politically and
morally consistent, it was necessary to name the culprits and identify the
concrete geopolitical and economic interests driving the issue of war and
militarism.
Appeals to morality as an
element for popular mobilization against war can be useful. But such appeals
have little more impact than an online petition if they substitute vague
platitudes for substance and specificity.
So it was with the PPC’s week
of actions against war. Just a few days before the week began, a vote took
place in the House of Representatives to support yet another increase to the
military budget. In a vote of 351 to 66, the House of Representatives
authorized a significant hike to an incredible $717 billion a year.
And then just a few days after
the PPC’s week of action on militarism and war, the Democrats delivered their
reckless and opportunistic ultimatum to the Trump administration on North Korea
that could very conceivably lead to another illegal and immoral U.S. war.
Not calling the Democrats out
on their warmongering is itself immoral.
It is also quite clear that
vague moral appeals are not enough to delineate the interests of the capitalist
elites and their commitment to war as oppositional to those of working people
and the poor, who in the U.S. serve the moneyed interests as enlisted cannon
fodder.
The positions staked out by
the leadership of the Democratic party just confirmed what was already commonly
understood as the hegemonic positions among the majority in the foreign policy
establishment.
Objectively, there was never
much ideological space between the right-wing policies of Dick Cheney or John
Bolton and the neoliberal right-wing policies of Democratic party
policy-makers. The differences were always merely tactical and not strategic in
the sense that they all want the North Koreans to be supplicants.
Unfortunately, the general
public is the only sector confused about the intentions and interests of
elitist policy-makers, especially those elements of the public conditioned to
believe that the Democratic party is less belligerent and less committed to
militarism than the Republicans.
The fact is that the
Democratic party establishment is also firmly entrenched on the right.
Defeating the bi-partisan right must be the task for ourselves and for the
world.
That is why the peace,
anti-war and anti-imperialist forces must do the work to clear up that
confusion. The movement must declare without equivocation the position of the
Black Alliance for Peace: Not one drop of blood from the working class and poor
to defend the interests of the capitalist oligarchy.
