[The U.S. continues to pour its money into military technology and
its political energy into defense strategies against what it perceives
as threats to its global hegemony from China and Russia—even during
a pandemic.] [[link removed]]

AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM MAY BE PUSHING THE WORLD INTO ITS MOST
DANGEROUS PERIOD EVER  
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Prabir Purkayastha
May 29, 2020
Independent Media Insitute
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_ The U.S. continues to pour its money into military technology and
its political energy into defense strategies against what it perceives
as threats to its global hegemony from China and Russia—even during
a pandemic. _

President Trump at the September 11th Pentagon Observance Ceremony,
Official White House photograph by Shealah Craighead

 

With the U.S. deciding to walk out
[[link removed]] of
the Open Skies agreement, the U.S. is signaling to the world that it
intends to return to days of Pax Americana that existed post-World War
II, when it was the sole possessor of nuclear weapons. It has
already walked out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002
[[link removed]] under
George W. Bush, and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF)
Treaty
[[link removed]] under
Trump. The only nuclear arms control treaty that still remains in
place is the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty
[[link removed]] (START), which
provides a rough limit and parity on the U.S. and Russia’s nuclear
arsenals. Its days also seem to be numbered, as it expires on February
5, 2021, leaving very little time for any serious discussion.

The Trump administration is now considering a resumption of nuclear
tests
[[link removed]],
which would be in violation of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban
Treaty, or CTBT. Is this yet another treaty destined for the waste
paper basket? This is apart from other nuclear restraint treaties that
the U.S. signed with other states such as North Korea and Iran, and
subsequently tore up unilaterally
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prompting the view that the U.S. is no longer capable of upholding
treaties.

Marshall Billingslea, who is the U.S. official arms control
negotiator, has talked about how the U.S. intends to spend Russia and
China “into oblivion,”
[[link removed]] as
it had done with the Soviet Union earlier. Obviously, as an arms
control negotiator, he is a fitting successor to John Bolton, whose
chief claim to fame is wielding a hammer to smash all arms control
agreements.

The U.S. is also weaponizing space
[[link removed]],
and has a new Space Command. Last year, Trump, speaking in the
Pentagon, said
[[link removed]],
“a space-based missile defense layer
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[is] going to be a very, very big part of our defense and, obviously,
of our offense.”

The U.S. continues to pour its money into military technology and its
political energy into defense strategies against what it perceives as
threats to its global hegemony from China and Russia—even during a
pandemic. The U.S. has modeled for the rest of the world that the
politics of security lie in terms of arms, no matter that funds are
desperately needed for public health.
 

So what is the Open Skies agreement? The treaty permits all its 35
signatories—the U.S., Russia and other NATO allies—to fly over
each other’s territories. Effectively, it allows official military
reconnaissance flights.

So why does the U.S. want to exit a treaty that makes it possible to
launch surveillance flights over Russia? This is a question that
even military experts are hard put to answer
[[link removed]].
One reason given is that the U.S. has complete imaging capabilities
over Russia using its satellites, and does not need old-fashioned
aircraft-based methods. Therefore, the U.S. is denying Russia
overflights over its territory in the belief that Russia will not be
able to match the U.S. space-based surveillance capabilities. And if
it tries to match the U.S., it is back to the Billingslea-Trump game;
the U.S. will win the new weapons war, or else move to an economic
war. But war it is either way.

The U.S. also has a second target motivating it to walk out of the
Open Skies agreement. European countries are very much a part of this
agreement, just not the U.S. The U.S. did not even talk to its NATO
allies before making the decision to abandon this agreement. The U.S.
wants to deny any strategic independence to its NATO allies. If the
Open Skies agreement now fails, as Russia has no incentive to offer
other NATO countries overflights when it has none over the U.S., other
NATO allies will be even more dependent on the U.S. for information.
This is a strike as much against its own NATO allies as against
Russia.

During the initial negotiations on the New START, Trump and
Billingslea are talking about bringing in China in order to limit its
nuclear arsenal as well. This was also one of the arguments given when
the U.S. abandoned the INF Treaty.

Consider the respective nuclear arsenals of countries. Currently, the
United States and Russia have more than 6,000 total nuclear warheads
each, while China has about 300, according to the Arms Control
Association’s factsheet
[[link removed]]. So
any agreement that brings in China can only increase its voluntary
limit and not reduce it! Just for the record, France also has 300,
with the UK at 200, and India and Pakistan around 150 each. Israel has
about 100, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North
Korea) has about 30.

In summary, the U.S. believes that since the ’90s, it has been and
continues to be the sole global hegemon. Any arms control treaty
hinders the exercise of its military might. It recognizes that it can
no longer control the global economy, where China is already in
the process of overtaking the U.S.
[[link removed]],
give or take a decade or two. A trade agreement that follows the
rules, even if the rules were put in place in the ’90s by the U.S.
and its allies in the World Trade Organization (WTO), no longer helps
the U.S. Faced with competition not only from China, but a range of
other countries, the U.S. has fallen back on its military power as its
key “bargaining” strategy: Agree to what it says or else. And if
any country tries to match the U.S. militarily, the U.S. will bankrupt
them as it did with the Soviet Union.

Historians Richard Lebow and Janice Stein have pointed out
[[link removed]] that
the collapse of the Soviet Union was not due to its military
competition with the U.S. Its defense budget did not increase in
Reagan’s Star Wars years. Neither is Russia willing to surrender to
the United States. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has made it
clear that Russia will not accept that the U.S. can become the global
overlord as it did during the Yeltsin years, and dictate to it and
other countries.

The U.S. change in tack with respect to China is part of what is now
being called a hybrid war—military threats coupled with economic
actions—to inflict enough damage that China is forced to sue for
peace, accepting its subordinate status.

That is why China and Russia have come together. China’s economic
strength and Russia’s military capabilities provide formidable
opposition to U.S. dominance. Russia’s technological strength
[[link removed]] in missiles
[[link removed]], submarines, and
radar has always been cutting-edge
[[link removed]].
The S-400 defense shields with radar arrays and defensive missiles are
still the best in the world
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and that is the reason why even U.S. allies such as Turkey and Saudi
Arabia are procuring them. China is likely already the world leader
in quantum communications [[link removed]] and is set
to overtake the U.S. in artificial intelligence
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the next five years. So when it comes to competition, China and Russia
are not as far behind as the U.S. seems to believe. And the U.S.
policies in the last 30 years have cemented Russia-China ties at a
much deeper level than in the past.

What options, then, do Russia and China have? Russia and China do not
plan to copy the U.S. strategy of global dominance, or engage in the
game of one-upmanship the U.S. is playing. For Russia and China, the
ability to inflict sufficient damage on the U.S. is deterrence enough.
So they are not going to make the mistake of matching the U.S.
military spending dollar for dollar. Putin’s strategy is to develop
weapons that can inflict maximum damage at a minimum cost—in other
words, develop a strategy for asymmetric war. This is the reason
behind the six new Russian weapons that Putin unveiled
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year: from hypersonic weapons to a new generation of ballistic
missiles.

The difference between the two approaches is their strategic visions.
For the U.S., it is spelled out in its various strategic documents
[[link removed]]:
it needs to militarily dominate every region in the world
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Any country that challenges the U.S., even in controlling its coastal
waters
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is a revisionist power
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This requires not strategic parity but overwhelming superiority, or
force projection in any global theater. In today’s day and age, this
is well beyond any country’s military reach.

The world is entering perhaps the most dangerous period it ever has,
not just because of climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic. The
nuclear arms race is taking place with the U.S. belief that it is
winnable. Abandoning all arms control agreements with one excuse or
the other is not simply the aberration of a Trump or a Bush, but very
much a part of U.S. exceptionalism
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The future of all nations is either surrender to the rule of the
hegemon, or allow a global nuclear arms race. This is Trump’s
vision, enunciated by his arms control negotiator. It has consequences
for all of us. Why then, are all other countries silent? This is why
there is an urgent need for the global peace movement to revive.
People everywhere have to fight for peace. It is not just Russia or
China or the United States at risk, but the whole of humanity.

_Prabir Purkayastha
[[link removed]]
is the founding editor of Newsclick.in [[link removed]], a
digital media platform. He is an activist for science and the Free
Software movement._

_This article was produced in partnership by __Newsclick_
[[link removed]]_ and __Globetrotter_
[[link removed]]_, a project of
the Independent Media Institute._

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