How Yugoslavia was destroyed?

This post was published in Nezavisimaya Gazeta. The point of view expressed in this article is authorial and do not necessarily reflect BM`s editorial stance.

***

MOSCOW, (BM) – After the death of Josip Broz Tito on May 4, 1980, the Yugoslav Empire lost the main link uniting the empire. In the further history of Yugoslavia, there were no longer any high statesmen who would pursue the line of so-called Tithonism.

A similar picture emerged in the Soviet Union. After the death of Joseph Stalin, six people led the USSR – Georgy Malenkov, Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko, Mikhail Gorbachev. As a result, the country lost its power, international authority, and people’s confidence.

The examples of Stalin and Tito – “two Josephs” – show and prove that multinational empires can only be ruled by people of the highest level, training, intelligence, carriers of the idea of ​​”statehood”.

Mediocrity can lead a state only in a simple military-political and strategic situation in peacetime. But most likely, even in relatively favorable conditions, such a leader will undermine the authority and power of the multinational state, lead it to destruction and disintegration. The actions of the leaders of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia after the death of their leaders are proof of this. Yugoslavia collapsed 10 years after the departure of Tito, the Soviet Union – 38 years after the death of Stalin.

Bloody decay scenario

The collapse of Yugoslavia, in contrast to the Soviet Union, followed a bloody scenario. Especially acute, painful – in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). For almost four years, the civil war was in its most inhuman and bloody form. Even the initiators of the destruction of Yugoslavia by the US, the EU and NATO understood that it was time to end it.

The agreement was adopted on November 21, 1995 in Dayton, and then signed on December 14, 1995 in Paris by the President of Bosnia and Herzegovina Aliya Izetbegovic, the President of Serbia Slobodan Milosevic and the President of Croatia Franjo Tudjman. The end of the Bosnian War and the formation of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina were announced.

To fulfill the terms of the agreement, the UN Security Council ordered a NATO peacekeeping operation. Russia, as a party to this agreement, expressed its intention to take part in the peacekeeping operation.

At the end of September 1995, the Chief of Staff of the Russian Defense Minister, Lieutenant General Valery Lapshov, called me and said: “Lesha, get ready to go to Belgium, to the city of Mons, to the Supreme Commander of the NATO Joint Armed Forces to agree on the conditions for the participation of our troops in the peacekeeping operation in Bosnia and Herzegovina ”. We are classmates at the Military Academy. M.V. Frunze, knew each other well.

I answer him: “Valera, are you kidding?” He laughs and says, “No jokes. The political decision on Russia’s participation in the operation has been made. But the diplomats cannot resolve the issue of the subordination of the Russian contingent. The main problem is the military aspect of our participation, while observing the principle of one-man command and avoiding direct subordination to NATO. The diplomats turned to the defense ministers of Russia and the United States and asked for a solution. The ministers agreed that Russia will send a group to Mons to study the issue. Pavel Grachev immediately told US Secretary of Defense William Perry that he was ready to give the name of the general who will lead the task force, and gave your name. Get ready. “

The Security Council instructed NATO to conduct the operation. So I became a party to the implementation of this agreement. Within two weeks it was necessary to study the situation in the Balkans, in Yugoslavia, to understand the goals and objectives of each of the participants in the peacekeeping operation and the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The study of many documents and meetings with experts made it possible to understand to a certain extent the situation in the Balkans, in the former Yugoslavia, the interests of the United States, Germany, France and the NATO bloc in general.

It has been 25 years since that time. Peacekeeping operations are currently taking place in various countries, but peace enforcement operations using troops rarely end successfully. To do this, first of all, a political solution must be found acceptable for the conflicting (belligerent) parties, and this is usually a very difficult and complex political and diplomatic process, in which the impartiality and equidistance of peacekeepers from the parties to the conflict must be ensured.

Today it is strange to hear about a peacekeeping operation in Ukraine, when for six years not a single political issue in relations with the DPR and LPR has been resolved, with the exception of periodically stopping shelling, which are not used to make political decisions, but imitate at least some activity of the Ukrainian leadership on fulfilling campaign promises to end the war.

One gets the impression that the initiators of peacekeeping initiatives, and these are the United States and some European countries, relying on Ukraine’s vassal dependence on Western handouts, have been deliberately distorting the essence of peacekeeping for six years and expect, under the guise of the authority of the UN and the EU, to achieve a settlement while completely ignoring the interests of the DPR and LPR.

Therefore, it makes sense to recall the operation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Its value lies in the fact that peace has been maintained in the region for over 25 years, and this is more important than all other problems.

On October 15, 1995, an operational group of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation of six people, led by me, flew to Brussels to prepare for Russia’s participation in a peacekeeping operation to enforce peace with the involvement of troops.

Bosnian War (1992-1995)

The disintegration of Yugoslavia after the separation of Slovenia, Croatia and Macedonia was continued by Bosnia and Herzegovina, which announced on March 2, 1992 its secession from the SFRY.

Bosnia and Herzegovina has a rather confusing and complex ethnic map: according to the 1992 census, 43.7% of the republic’s population were Muslim; Serbs accounted for 34.1%; Croats – 17.3%; 5.5% considered themselves Yugoslavs due to mixed marriages. Moreover, the boundaries were not clearly marked. In each part there were enclaves, the peoples were mixed, with the Serbs having a majority in more than half of the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

National demarcation began in the 1990 parliamentary elections. Their result very accurately reflected the alignment of forces in the republic: the Muslim Democratic Action Party won 86 seats, the Serbian Democratic Party – 72, the Croatian Democratic Commonwealth – 44. The main goal of the Democratic Action Party was to unite Muslims, because Islamic order can only be established in those countries where Muslims make up the majority of the population. Izetbegovic, having come to power, began to act, guided by these provisions. He embarked on a course of secession from the SFRY and the creation of a Muslim state, with the Serbs and Croats assigned the role of national minorities. This, of course, caused discontent among both, since Muslims did not constitute the absolute majority of the population, and according to the 1974 Constitution, all three peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina were considered state-forming, constituted the total population of the republic and were equal.

On March 1, 1992, Bosnia and Herzegovina declared its independence. In protest, the Serbs left parliament and boycotted the independence referendum in late February. The Serbs were in favor of a united Bosnia and Herzegovina and were against the withdrawal from the SFRY. However, despite the boycott, the referendum took place: slightly more than 60% of the population came to it, and about 60% of them voted for the independence of BiH. Disagreeing with this, the Serbs proclaimed the creation of the Republika Srpska within Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The Serbs advocated the preservation of Bosnia and Herzegovina as part of the SFRY, but since this did not work out, they tried to occupy territories with a predominantly Serb population, separate from Muslims and create their own state in order to join the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the future.

For Muslims, the maximum program was the creation of a unitary Muslim state, and in the event of the collapse of Bosnia and Herzegovina, try to expand the territory as much as possible and raise the Muslims of Sandzak, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro to fight.

The Croats also sought to expand their territory, annex Herceg Bosna and unite with greater Croatia.

In this context, the EU Council of Ministers on April 6, 1992 adopted the Declaration on the Recognition of the Independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In early May, Bosnia and Herzegovina becomes a member of the CSCE, and on May 22, the UN. It should be noted that as early as December 17, 1991, the EU adopted a Declaration on the Criteria for the Recognition of New States in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, which stipulated a number of conditions after which the new state could be recognized. According to this declaration, the new state was obliged to: respect the provisions of the UN Charter; to fulfill the commitments formulated in the Helsinki Final Act and the Charter of Paris, especially in matters of the rule of law, democracy and human rights; guarantee the rights of ethnic and national groups and minorities; respect the inviolability of all borders, which can only be changed peacefully and with mutual consent; acknowledge all relevant commitments related to disarmament and non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, as well as security and regional stability; solve all problems related to the legal heritage of states and regional disputes through negotiations.

The EU and its member states also demanded from each Yugoslav republic (before its recognition) to give firm constitutional and political guarantees of the absence of territorial claims to any neighboring EU member state and the obligation not to conduct hostile propaganda against any neighboring EU member state.

Despite the fact that Bosnia and Herzegovina did not fulfill most of the conditions, its independence was recognized. This was done for political reasons, a big role here was played by the pressure from Germany, which played the main role in the EU and sought to demonstrate a new status after the unification. The foreign policy goals of a united Germany were formulated by German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who said that “the Germans now, more than ever, need territory. We want to turn Central Europe into a conglomerate of small states completely dependent on Bonn. These countries will be completely dependent on German capital and will become puppets of this great power.”

Germany in the Yugoslav conflict pursued the goal of regaining control over the northwestern part of the Balkans and the northeastern coast of the Adriatic Sea. With the existence of a unified Yugoslavia, it was impossible to realize these goals, since the SFRY has always been an opponent of German expansion in the Balkans. Therefore, Germany provided support to the separatists, who, having come to power, could become allies of the FRG and the conductors of its policy in the Balkan region. Pursuing its policy, Germany put pressure on the EU countries so that they recognize the independence of the Yugoslav republics. For the sake of preserving the unity of the EU, its members were forced to agree to the recognition of Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. This policy of the international community led to the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which began one day after the recognition of its independence.

The conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina is characterized by a strong influence of the international factor, at this stage – mainly from European and Islamic countries and organizations, with the hidden support of the United States. Croatia actively intervenes in the conflict, helping the Bosnian Croats with troops and weapons. Muslims were assisted by Islamic countries, which, despite the embargo imposed on September 25, 1991, supplied them with weapons (mainly through Croatia). Yugoslavia helped the Serbs at the first stage of the war (before the introduction of sanctions). In addition, the Serbs used the weapons of the Yugoslav People’s Army that remained on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This gave them a significant advantage, allowed them to deploy active hostilities and capture a large territory.

The world community has taken a clearly expressed anti-Serb position. It proclaimed the Serbs the aggressor, although it is difficult to talk about any aggression during the civil war. All actions were of a clear anti-Serb and anti-Yugoslav character. Citing the fact that the FRY is providing assistance to the Bosnian Serbs, the UN on May 30, 1992 imposed sanctions against Yugoslavia. The international community turned a blind eye to the fact that the Croatian army was fighting on the side of the Bosnian Croats, and did not impose any sanctions against Croatia. All the conflicting parties seized territories and carried out ethnic cleansing, but they blamed the Serbs for everything, despite the fact that they suffered from the cleansing even more than Croats and Muslims.


The Balkans are a traditional sphere of Russia’s interests, but in the Yugoslav crisis it took a rather strange position: until the beginning of 1992 it advocated the preservation of the SFRY, but did not take independent steps. Then Russia’s policy changed dramatically, and following the EU, it recognized the independence of Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the future, she was never able to develop an independent position and obediently followed in the wake of Western politics. Russia has not defined its foreign policy priorities in the Balkans, limiting itself to statements about its desire to cooperate with the West. Such passivity and ignorance of traditional Russian national interests in the Balkans led to a complete loss of initiative by Moscow and turned Russia into a leading country.

Moreover, Russia obediently joined all anti-Serb measures, voting for the sanctions, which allowed it, according to the then Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, to find itself “for the first time in history in an unprecedentedly favorable international environment during a period of severe internal trials.” Of course, the internal political situation in Russia was difficult, but it would be more beneficial, including for international prestige, to take a more balanced and nationally verified position.

In such “favorable conditions” my group had to defend our interests. But in such conditions the entire Russian diplomacy was forced to work, headed from October 11, 1990 to January 5, 1996 by Andrei Kozyrev, who currently lives in the United States and in his speeches expresses confidence in the impending collapse of the “anti-Western” regime of modern Russia. The modern Foreign Ministry, headed by Sergei Lavrov, primarily defends Russia’s national interests while simultaneously trying to establish cooperation with the West to the extent that the latter will not harm our interests.

To some extent, I entered a political path unusual for a professional military, but working with NATO for two years under the leadership of an outstanding Russian diplomat Vitaly Churkin gave me a certain understanding of many political issues. The meetings with Vitaly Ivanovich were weekly and dealt with many practical issues of relations with the leadership of the alliance and representatives of NATO member states as partners in the operation in BiH. Some assistance was also provided by the representative of our Ministry of Defense at the Russian Embassy in Brussels, Colonel Alexander Bartosh, who was part of the NATO liaison group headed by Vitaly Churkin. Together with Aleksandr Aleksandrovich, we prepared my first speech in Russian political practice at a meeting of the NATO Military Committee, where in the summer of 1996 I had to single-handedly fight off very acute questions from the military representatives of the alliance countries about our position in BiH.

Mass media (including, unfortunately, Russian ones) played an important role in shaping the image of the Serb aggressors. They waged a real information war, accusing the Serbs of all mortal sins and calling for an end to the Serbian aggression. This further strengthened the position of Croats and Muslims in the eyes of the world community. We can say that in the wars in the Balkans, foreign and some of the domestic media gained experience in waging information war and later in all conflicts and wars they already ran “ahead of the locomotive”, often provoking their beginning, misleading world public opinion in the interests of the customer. Subsequently, the media began to turn into an important instrument of the global hybrid war.

The collapse of the Wence-Owen plan

So, the UN is trying to resolve the conflict, various peace plans are being developed. Croatians are supported by Germany, England, France, Muslims – by Muslim countries and the EU. As a result, the Serbs are imposed on options that are most beneficial to the Croats and Muslims.

The next plan for a way out of this situation was proposed in the fall of 1992 by the co-chairs of the ICFY (international conference on the former Yugoslavia) – the special envoy of the UN Secretary General and former US secretary of state for foreign affairs Cyrus Vance and the EU commissioner David Owen. During the negotiations, they promised to work towards “the establishment of a lasting and just peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina.” In Geneva, in December 1992 – January 1993, Wence and Owen presented a plan for a peace settlement, including a set of treaties: on the cessation of hostilities and demilitarization; about the constitutional structure; map with new borders; humanitarian treaty. As is often the case, the road to hell was paved with good intentions.

The plan did not take into account many of the demands of the Serbs, which aroused strong objections from them. By the beginning of 1993, the Serbs controlled 70% of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and according to the plan they were supposed to give up a significant part of this territory. Although they received more than they wanted in March 1992, their territory was divided, the cantons did not border either Serbia or each other. Moreover, these territories were economically backward. The Serbs also insisted on changing the status of the provinces, believing that they should receive more independence. The Wens-Owen plan did not allow the creation of a Serbian state. However, by refusing to sign the plan, the Serbs did not stop negotiations, believing that the proposed option for a peaceful settlement should become the basis for further discussion.

The Croats agreed to the plan because they received additional territories that would make it easy to join Croatia in the future.

The Muslims did not agree with the map of the division of the republic and demanded an increase in their territory. They tried to drag out time, to get the condemnation of the Serbs by the world community.

The negotiations dragged on, and the international community increased pressure on the Serbs. The Wens-Owen plan failed not only because of the intransigence of the Serbs. Immediately after the signing of the plans, the Muslim-Croatian Federation (IHF) crackled – they could not divide the territory among themselves in Central Bosnia. But the international community only put pressure on the Serbs.

Dayton Accords: How It Was

After the failure of the Vence-Owen plan, a new stage in the negotiation process began – the role of the United States increased. Back in 1991, a new NATO strategy was developed, the idea of ​​controlling and settling military-political crises was put forward. If it is not possible to prevent the crisis, then the use of the alliance’s troops was envisaged, including in regions beyond the boundaries of its zone of influence. Thus, NATO received an important argument in favor of its continued existence – the use of the alliance as a peacekeeper – a military guarantor of crisis settlement.

The situation became even more complicated after Bill Clinton came to power in the United States, who took a tough stance towards the Serbs and demanded to punish them as aggressors. In addition, Clinton opposed the Wence-Owen plan, which had a strong impact on Muslims who refused to sign the documents.

The United States and NATO stepped up their policies in the Balkans, began to carry out forceful pressure, bombed Serbian positions, and eventually imposed their own version of a peaceful settlement on Bosnia and Herzegovina – the Dayton Accords.

By intervening in the Bosnian conflict, the United States declared its goal to establish a lasting, just peace while maintaining the unity of the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. But this is an official statement, and the main task was to increase the sphere of influence, and it was also necessary to demonstrate the effectiveness and necessity of NATO in the new conditions. When the main enemy, the Soviet Union, was gone, it had to be urgently replaced with a set of new threats and challenges that could not be dealt with without the United States and NATO. The US tried to disrupt the negotiations when the EU was leading them so that everyone could see that the Europeans cannot deal with the conflict without America’s help. European countries completely fell into the wake of American foreign policy, and the UN (with a rather spineless policy of Russia) could only legitimize the actions of the States.

In the Bosnian conflict, Washington took a sharply anti-Serb position. With the emergence of the United States on the political scene in the Balkans, the pressure on the Serbs ceased to be only political and economic and became military. Plans were being drawn up for air strikes against Bosnian Serb territory. At the first stage, they were supposed to be applied only to suppress firing positions, at the second stage, they planned to bomb infrastructure and supply facilities. At the same time, for the first strike, the authorization of the UN Secretary General and the NATO Council was needed, and for the subsequent ones – only the NATO Council. Demands for bombing increased especially since February 1994, after the explosion at the Merkale market in Sarajevo. According to many sources, it was a provocation by Muslims, but both the EU and NATO seized on yet another reason to increase pressure on the Serbian side.

The bombing of Serbian positions began in April. The decision on them was taken by the commander of the UN forces, and the NATO forces were implemented, and this took place without consulting the Russian side. At the same time, attempts to peaceful settlement of the conflict did not stop. On April 25, 1994, a contact group on BiH was formed, it included the USA, Germany, France, Great Britain and Russia. On August 4, she proposed a plan, according to which the Serbs received 49% of the territory of BiH, the Bosnians and Croats 51%, but negotiations were interrupted after the terrorist attack on the Sarajevo market, in which the Serbs were accused. Since neither the UN nor the EU was able to succeed, the initiative was finally seized by the United States. A new stage of negotiations began under their auspices.

A prominent role in the preparations for the negotiations in Dayton was played by Richard Holbrooke, the US Deputy Secretary of State for Europe and Canada, who managed to seat Slobodan Milosevic, Aliya Izetbegovic and Franjo Tudjman at the negotiating table.

On February 28, 1994, the United States began to attract aviation to combat the aircraft of the Republika Srpska and destroyed five attack aircraft, and from November NATO aircraft bombed the Udina airfield and Serbian positions. On July 11, 1995, the Bosnian Serbs, led by Ratko Mladic, captured Srebnica and killed 8,000 Muslims. In response, the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia issued arrest warrants for Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic – effectively decapitating the Bosnian Serbs.

On 28 August, an explosion at a market in Sarajevo killed 28 people. According to NATO, the Serbs were the culprit. From 30 August to 14 September, following the Serbs’ refusal to withdraw heavy weapons from the Sarajevo region, NATO launched Operation Deliberate Force, using aerial bombardments of Republika Srpska targets. Richard Holbrook on October 5 announced a two-month truce and began peace talks. On November 21, it was announced the development of the Dayton Agreement, signed in Paris on December 25, 1995. The end of the Bosnian War was declared and the modern constitutional structure of Bosnia and Herzegovina was determined.

Military and defense news, analysis, research and data (bulgarianmilitary.com)
By TOC On Sep 26, 2020

28 Taliban fighters killed in IS attack on Kabul airport. Latest updates

The Taliban said there was no reason to extend the August 31 deadline for foreign forces to leave the country after the deadly attacks on the Kabul airport.

By hindustantimes.com |

 Written by Meenakshi Ray, New Delhi
PUBLISHED ON AUG 27, 2021 

Two suicide bombers and gunmen of the Islamic State group's affiliate in Afghanistan attacked Afghans flocking to Kabul's airport on Thursday, killing at least 60 Afghans and 13 US troops. The Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) said in its claim of responsibility that one of its suicide bombers targeted "translators and collaborators with the American army".

The ISKP's statement carried a photo of what the militant group said was the bomber who carried out the attack. The image shows the alleged attacker standing with the explosive belt in front of the black IS flag with a black cloth covering his face, only his eyes showing.

Here are the latest updates after the deadly Kabul airport attack:

1. A Taliban official told Reuters on Friday that at least 28 members of the hardline Islamist group were among the people killed in explosions overnight outside the airport in Kabul. "We have lost more people than the Americans," the official, who declined to be identified, told Reuters. He said there was no reason to extend the August 31 deadline for foreign forces to leave the country.

Also read | Saleh says Taliban denying ISIS link is like Pak denial on Quetta Shura

2. The evacuation of civilians from Kabul has been accelerated after overnight attacks near the airport, a Western security official stationed at the airport told Reuters on Friday. The official, who declined to be named, said flights were taking off regularly.

3. Australia has stopped evacuation flights from Afghanistan after the attacks by the Islamic State suicide bombers, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Friday. Morrison said Australia's military personnel had been evacuated from Kabul just hours before the attacks and with security so precarious it was no longer safe to continue evacuations. "Our plan now moves into its post evacuation stage and that involves ensuring the process of returning, through our official humanitarian program," Morrison told reporters in Canberra.

Also read | Curious case of ISKP emir Aslam Farooqui and Pak links

4. The US on Thursday evacuated 7,500 people from Afghanistan after the twin blasts rocked Kabul airport. "From August 26 at 3am EDT to August 26 at 3pm EDT, a total of approximately 7,500 people were evacuated from Kabul. This is the result of 14 US military flights (13 C-17s and 1 C-130) which carried approximately 5,100 evacuees and 39 coalition flights which carried 2,400 people," a White House official said.

Also read | 'We will hunt you down': Biden to Kabul attackers

5. Norway can no longer assist in evacuating remaining citizens from Afghanistan's capital, Norwegian foreign minister Ine Eriksen Soereide has said. "The doors at the airport are now closed and it is no longer possible to get people in," Soereide told broadcaster TV2 on Thursday.

6. US troops helping to evacuate Afghans desperate to flee Taliban rule braced for more attacks on Friday after the Islamic State attack. General Frank McKenzie, head of US Central Command, said American commanders were on alert for more attacks by Islamic State, including possibly rockets or vehicle-borne bombs targeting the airport. "We're doing everything we can to be prepared," he said.

7. US President Joe Biden has pledged the United States would hunt down those responsible for the two blasts at the Kabul airport and said he had asked the Pentagon to develop plans to strike back at them. "We will not forgive, we will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay," Biden said in remarks at the White House. He promised US evacuations would continue. "We will not be deterred by terrorists, we will not let them stop our mission. We will continue the evacuations," he said.

Also read | Key things to know about ISIS-K, group behind Kabul airport attack

8. Amrullah Saleh, who has proclaimed himself the 'caretaker' President of Afghanistan, said that ISKP has links with the Taliban and the Haqqani network. Saleh also hit out at the Taliban for denying links with the Islamic State. "Every evidence we have in hand shows that IS-K cells have their roots in Talibs & Haqqani network particularly the ones operating in Kabul. Talibs denying links with ISIS is identical/similar to the denial of Pakistan on Quetta Shura. Talibs have learned very well from the master. #Kabul," Saleh said in a tweet.

9. White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said that the US flag will be flown at half-mast until the evening of August 30 to honour those killed at Kabul airport. "As a mark for respect, starting today, the United States flag will be flown at half-staff at the White House and upon all public buildings and grounds... until sunset on August 30, 2021, in honour of the victims of the senseless acts of violence in Kabul," Psaki said.

10. Joe Biden's meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has been rescheduled as the US president cleared his agenda to address bombings in Kabul. "The president's bilateral meeting... has been rescheduled for tomorrow," the White House said.

Money talks: Russia, India, and China are preparing to enter Afghanistan

By TOC On Aug 24, 2021

The original article is in Russian and was published in Sputnik Uzbekistan

PANAGYURISHTE, ($1= 1.67 Bulgarian Levas) – The lightning-fast collapse of the pro-American government of Afghanistan, which in a matter of days fell under not the most violent blows of the Taliban, overshadowed all other world events.

And no wonder: after all, this is the most grandiose military and foreign policy fiasco of the United States since the end of the Vietnam War.

The failure of the world hegemon was so deafening that the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell at an unscheduled meeting of the European Parliament committees on foreign affairs called to prevent Russia and China from “taking control of the country and becoming sponsors of Kabul.”

The concern of the collective West is understandable since there are already interested players lining up along the perimeter of Afghanistan who can offer it much more than military occupation and control through a puppet government. And it’s not just about Moscow and Beijing. Afghanistan is extremely rich in minerals, there are nearly one and a half thousand deposits, including oil, gas, coal, copper, iron, precious and semi-precious stones.

The permanent state of war makes it extremely difficult to explore and clarify the available reserves, but even what the British, Soviet, and American geologists managed to reconnoiter in turn hints: the power that can stop the endless flywheel of war and organize some semblance of peace, security and stability will simply swim in money.

The economic theory claims that energy is always the basis of state development in the modern world, and the Taliban if they show a pearl of certain political wisdom, have every chance to go down in history as reformers who pulled Afghanistan out of the Middle Ages.

Let us briefly consider what Kabul has as a strategic reserve.

First, there is a huge Hajigak iron ore deposit in Afghanistan. Its main feature is that the ore lies very close to the surface, which allows it to be mined openly – simply with the help of excavators.

At the same time, in the neighboring areas of Shabashak and Dar-l-Suf there are industrial deposits of coking coal, that is, nature itself has created ideal conditions for the development of metallurgy.

This combination of conditions was simply doomed to attract the attention of India, which approved a state program to conquer the world steel market.

Delhi is very serious about becoming the world’s premier home. Therefore, back in 2016, India, Iran, and Afghanistan signed a trilateral agreement, under which Delhi invested in the modernization of the Iranian port of Chahbehar, and Tehran built a direct railway line that reached Herat from the northwestern border.

India needs Afghan ore and coal so much that it is ready to invest ten billion dollars in the construction of a mine and a direct railway to Chahbehar. The project was stopped due to the aggravation of the situation in the country, and the Taliban, who seized the province, kept a pause.

In the northern province of Balkh, along the Amu Darya and the border with Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, large reserves of hydrocarbons have been discovered.

The US Geological Survey, which conducted field surveys under the cover of the American army, estimated the potential of the basin at 1.8 billion barrels of oil, 440 billion cubic meters of gas, and more than 560 thousand barrels of gas condensate.

For Afghanistan, which consumes a paltry five thousand barrels of oil a day, this is simply fabulous wealth that can solve the problem of energy hunger for decades to come.

To the sadness of Washington, China has its eyes on the oil and gas region. In 2011, Kabul agreed with the state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation. The corporation received a concession for the development of three fields, and in return undertook to build three refineries, which was done over the next three years.

China’s main interest here is lithium. Ten years ago, the same US Geological Survey published data from which it follows that three trillion dollars worth of lithium reserves are hidden in the bowels of Afghan soil.

An obligatory remark should be made here. Often, data on lithium reserves in Afghanistan are presented as fact, but this is not entirely true. For two years, American military geologists managed to conduct only surface exploration, identifying the basins, where, focusing on mining and geological conditions, there could potentially be metal deposits. At the same time, the Americans did not find or extract physical lithium.

However, geological exploration has long passed the stage of walking with a hammer, and modern modeling with a very high degree of probability predicts the presence of the coveted rare earth metal. For China, the world’s leading manufacturer of electric vehicles and battery technology, this was more than enough.

Just a couple of hours after the Taliban seized the capital, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang announced that China is counting on “the most friendly cooperation with Afghanistan.” It is noteworthy that the Chinese Embassy in Kabul was also not damaged and is now guarded by armed representatives of the new government.


On the pages of the American press, a real hysteria unfolded in this regard. For example, CNBC writes that now not only lithium will fall into the hands of America’s main rival, but also cerium, neodymium, lanthanum, zinc, and mercury present in Afghanistan. If China gains a foothold in the region, it will become an almost monopoly in the processing and use of rare earth metals.

And what about Russia – do the Russians have nothing to offer and also to stake out our presence in the region? Of course, they have.

You need to start with the signature dish that Moscow traditionally offers to everyone who wants to cooperate – the main gas pipelines. In 2010, a quadripartite agreement was signed on the construction of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline with a length of 1.7 thousand kilometers and a capacity of 33 billion cubic meters.

The reason is still the same: endless instability, fighting, and power that does not control most of its remote provinces.

If the situation in Afghanistan stabilizes, Russia can not only become the main supplier of pipes but also help increase fuel supplies by at least redirecting the five and a half billion cubic meters of Turkmen gas purchased annually to the south. But this is not the main thing either.

Afghanistan is experiencing, without any exaggeration, an enormous shortage of electricity. The country with a population of 38 million, that is, more than modern Ukraine has only seven power plants with a combined installed capacity of 3.1 gigawatts.

For comparison: in Ukraine, the same figure is 55 gigawatts. For more than a decade, Moscow has under the cloth a project of an energy bridge between Azerbaijan and Iran, which, after consolidating the current status quo in Karabakh, has every chance of being implemented. In case of interest from the Afghan side, the energy bridge can be extended further to the east. It is much easier to install power lines than to pull a railway line.

In addition, despite all the hardships, two hydroelectric power plants operate in Afghanistan, Darunta and Pul-I-Khumri, and in recent years Russia has gained a wealth of experience both in modernizing its hydroelectric power plants and building new ones, including small and medium-sized power plants built even in difficult high altitude conditions.

The very near future will show how events in the region will develop, but the given trend hints that the pattern of presence of the main world powers there is likely to change beyond recognition.

Pharma
Contaminant in Moderna COVID-19 vaccine vials found in Japan was metallic particles: report

by Kevin Dunleavy |
Aug 27, 2021 

Japan has suspended the use of 1.63 million doses of Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine. (Moderna)

Moderna is getting more clarity on the contamination in vials of its COVID-19 vaccine that were discovered in Japan.

The contaminant is believed to be a metallic particle, said Japanese public broadcasting outlet NHK, citing health ministry sources.

Wednesday, Takeda, Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine partner in Japan, suspended the use of 1.63 million doses that had been distributed to 863 vaccination centers in the country. Contaminants were found in vials of one lot, and, as a precaution, Moderna said it put two adjacent lots on hold.

The suspension of the doses comes as 80% of Japan's population is under coronavirus restrictions.

RELATED: Moderna probes reports of COVID-19 vaccine contamination in Japan

Moderna has traced the issue to a production line in Spain, where one of its manufacturing partners produces the vaccines. In a regulatory filing Thursday, the biotech's Spanish production partner, Rovi Laboratories, said the contamination was limited to the one product lot bound for Japan. The company added it is investigating the issue and is in communication with health authorities in Japan.

The particulate matter, whose composition has not been determined, was discovered in roughly 40 unused vials across eight vaccination sites in Japan, NHK reported. Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, Katsunobu Kato, told reporters that contaminated doses were administered to an unspecified number of people.

Moderna said it hasn't identified any safety concerns, and it has not received any reports of adverse reactions among vaccine recipients.

RELATED: Moderna inks fill-finish pact with Spain's Rovi for 'hundreds of millions' of COVID-19 shot doses

In June of 2020, Rovi signed on to produce Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine. In April, the company revealed that it would begin producing bulk drug substance—in addition to bottling doses—from its plant in Grenada, Spain. Previously, the manufacturer received active vaccine ingredient from Switzerland.

Compared to manufacturing problems that have hampered COVID-19 shots made by Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca, it’s been a relatively smooth ride for Moderna’s vaccine rollout. The company expects to make $19 billion in sales of the vaccine this year.

mRNA Was Supposed To Stay Ahead Of Variants. Why Aren't We Using Its Full Potential?

Angus Chen
August 27, 2021 

WBUR

CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE 

In this Dec. 14, 2020, file photo, a vial of the Pfizer vaccine for COVID-19 sits on a table at Hartford Hospital in Hartford, Conn. (Jessica Hill/AP File)

Part of the exciting promise of modified mRNA technology that built Moderna and Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccines was an assurance against variants that might one day evade the vaccines’ protection.

If any troublesome mutations arose, researchers said, manufacturers would be able to reprogram the string of genetic code inside the vaccines to counter that.

Manufacturers have indeed created shots updated for the delta variant, says Dr. Dan Barouch, an immunologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center who worked on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Delta has quickly become the dominant strain in the U.S., and it appears to spread even among fully vaccinated people. So, you might think it would make sense to start distributing shots tailored to the delta variant's genome.

And yet, at the moment, vaccine makers are still cranking out their original formulas for new inoculations and the booster shots that the Biden administration plans to authorize in September.

These vaccines contain a string of genetic letters that shows the body's cells how to create the spike protein, which the coronavirus uses to attack human cells. The immune system can then build antibodies that can target and neutralize the spike protein. In the original vaccines, this genetic code was developed using the genome from the coronavirus that first sparked the pandemic. Updated vaccines could use the genome from the delta variant, rather than the ancestral coronavirus, and generate antibodies that are theoretically better at fighting delta.

Except — they probably wouldn’t be much better, Barouch says.

This transmission electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, isolated from a patient in the U.S. The spikes on the outer edge of the virus particles give coronaviruses their name, crown-like. Image captured and colorized at NIAID's Rocky Mountain Laboratories (RML) in Hamilton, Montana. 

Credit: NIAID. (Photo by: IMAGE POINT FR/NIH/NIAID/BSIP/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

That’s because the delta variant’s spike protein isn’t that different from the elder coronavirus in shape and appearance, so it’s still vulnerable to the antibodies that the vaccines create. Instead, Barouch thinks the reason why delta is able to cause so many breakthrough infections has more to do with its “hyper infectiousness rather than its intrinsic ability to evade antibodies,” Barouch says.

Compared to the ancestral variant, the delta variant tends to cause people to gush with viral particles. That means if you are exposed to delta, you’re likely exposed to a great deal more of the virus, and you’re more likely to get exposed in the first place thanks to the variant’s high infectiousness.

“If you’re exposed with a lot more virus, then the chance the vaccine will protect you is lower,” Barouch says. “And if you go to a crowded venue with many people in a closed space, you might be exposed not once but maybe 10 or 100 times.”

There are also public health and economic considerations that may explain holding off on a new vaccine. There are currently millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses in the U.S. going unused. Suddenly switching to a new version of the vaccine might increase the chances those doses go to waste, says Dr. Benjamin Linas, an epidemiologist at Boston University

.

A sign promotes COVID-19 vaccines at Lake Charles Memorial Hospital on August 10, 2021 in Lake Charles, Louisiana. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

“I don’t know what message it would give if [Pfizer or Moderna] said, ‘Oh we have a specially engineered vaccine for delta.’ Would that generate concern that the original vaccine didn’t work? Which is absolutely not true. These vaccines still work,” Linas says.

Data from the U.S. show the vaccines remain very effective at preventing the most severe outcomes: hospitalization and death. And studies from Israel suggest that giving a third shot of the current Pfizer or Moderna vaccines does help with the delta variant and further reduce hospitalizations, severe illness and death, says Bronwyn MacInnis, a genomic epidemiologist at the Broad Institute. She argues it may not be worth the effort to rebuild the country's vaccine supply with shots re-engineered around the delta genome.

“Given the current vaccines still work and boosting with them seems to help, it may make more sense to continue to go with the bird in hand, and possibly leverage the reprogrammability of the mRNA [vaccines] for future threats,” she says.

After all, the ability to re-code the vaccines is not going away, MacInnis points out. If another variant pops up that does make the current vaccines obsolete, it might be better to incur the cost of revamping the vaccine for that new danger, instead of one that the current vaccines can already defeat.

This segment aired on August 27, 2021.

Blinded by the Light: Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the Age of Normalized Violence

BY HENRY GIROUX

 AUGUST 6, 2021

COUNTERPUNCH
Facebook

TwitterRedditEmail

Detail from a U.S. Air Force map of Hiroshima, pre-bombing, circles drawn at 1,000 foot intervals radiating out from ground zero, the site directly under the explosion. (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration).

On Monday August 6, 1945, the United States unleashed an atomic bomb on Hiroshima killing 140,000 people instantly. 70% of the city was destroyed.  A few days later on August 9th, another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki killing an estimated 70,000 people.[2] The Japanese government stated that the death toll was much higher than the American estimates, indicating that it was close to a half million.  Many died not only because of lack of medical help, but also from radioactive rain. In the immediate aftermath, the incineration of mostly innocent civilians was buried in official government pronouncements about the victory of the bombings of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Violence rendered in military abstractions and patriotic platitudes is itself an act of violence. The visceral effect of violence brings to the surface what can only be considered intolerable, unthinkable, and never unknowable. Maybe such horror can only be possible in the language of journalism.

Within a short time after the dropping of the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, John Hersey wrote a devastating description of the misery and suffering caused by the bomb. Removing the bomb from abstract arguments endorsing matters of technique, efficiency, and national honor, Hersey first published in The New Yorker and later in a widely read book an exhausting and terrifying description of the bombs effects on the people of Hiroshima, portraying in detail the horror of the suffering caused by the bomb.  There is one haunting passage that not only illustrates the horror of the pain and suffering, but also offers a powerful metaphor for the blindness that overtook both the victims and the perpetrators. He writes:

On his way back with the water, [Father Kleinsorge] got lost on a detour around a fallen tree, and as he looked for his way through the woods, he heard a voice ask from the underbrush, ‘Have you anything to drink?’ He saw a uniform. Thinking there was just one soldier, he approached with the water.  When he had penetrated the bushes, he saw there were about twenty men, they were all in exactly the same nightmarish state: their faces were wholly burned, their eye sockets were hollow, the fluid from their melted eyes had run down their cheeks. Their mouths were mere swollen, pus-covered wounds, which they could not bear to stretch enough to admit the spout of the teapot.[3]

The nightmarish image of fallen soldiers staring with hollow sockets, eyes liquidated on cheeks and mouths swollen and pus-filled stands as a warning to those who would refuse blindly the moral witnessing necessary to keep alive for future generations the memory of the horror of nuclear weapons and the need to eliminate them. Hersey’s literal depiction of mass violence against civilians serves as a kind of mirrored doubling, referring at one level to nations blindly driven by militarism and hyper-nationalism and at another level the need to exorcise history which now functions as a curse.

The atomic bomb was celebrated by those who argued that its use was responsible for concluding the war with Japan. Also applauded was the power of the bomb and the wonder of science in creating it, especially “the atmosphere of technological fanaticism” in which scientists worked to create the most powerful weapon of destruction then known to the world.[4] Conventional justification for dropping the atomic bombs held that “it was the most expedient measure to securing Japan’s surrender [and] that the bomb was used to shorten the agony of war and to save American lives.”[5]Left out of that succinct legitimating narrative were the growing objections to the use of atomic weaponry put forth by a number of top military leaders and politicians, including General Dwight Eisenhower, who was then the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, former President Herbert Hoover, and General Douglas MacArthur, all of whom argued it was not necessary to end the war. [6] A position later proven to be correct.

For a brief time, the Atom Bomb was celebrated as a kind of magic talisman entwining salvation and scientific inventiveness and in doing so functioned to “simultaneously domesticate the unimaginable while charging the mundane surroundings of our everyday lives with a weight and sense of importance unmatched in modern times.”[7] In spite of the initial celebration of the effects of the bomb and the orthodox defense that accompanied it, whatever positive value the bomb may have had among the American public, intellectuals, and popular media began to dissipate as more and more people became aware of the massive deaths along with suffering and misery it caused.[8]

Kenzaburo Oe, the Nobel Prize winner for Literature, noted that in spite of attempts to justify the bombing  “from the instant the atomic bomb exploded, it [soon] became the symbol of human evil, [embodying] the absolute evil of war.”[9] What particularly troubled Oe was the scientific and intellectual complicity in the creation of and in the lobbying for its use, with acute awareness that it would turn Hiroshima into a “vast ugly death chamber.” [10]  More pointedly, it revealed a new stage in the merging of military actions and scientific methods, indeed a new era in which the technology of destruction could destroy the earth in roughly the time it takes to boil an egg. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki forecasted a new industrially enabled kind of violence and warfare in which the distinction between soldiers and civilians disappeared and the indiscriminate bombing of civilians was normalized. But more than this, the American government exhibited a ‘total embrace of the atom bomb,” that signalled support for the first time of a “notion of unbounded annihilation [and] “the totality of destruction.”[11]

Hiroshima and Nagasaki designated the beginning of the nuclear era in which as Oh Jung points out “Combatants were engaged on a path toward total war in which technological advances, coupled with the increasing effectiveness of an air strategy, began to undermine the ethical view that civilians should not be targeted… This pattern of wholesale destruction blurred the distinction between military and civilian casualties.”[12]  The destructive power of the bomb and its use on civilians also marked a turning point in American self-identity in which the United States began to think of itself as a superpower, which as Robert Jay. Lifton points out refers to “a national mindset–put forward strongly by a tight-knit leadership group–that takes on a sense of omnipotence, of unique standing in the world that grants it the right to hold sway over all other nations.”[13]  The power of the scientific imagination and its murderous deployment gave birth simultaneously to the American disimagination machine with its capacity to rewrite history in order to render it an irrelevant relic best forgotten.

What remains particularly ghastly about the rationale for dropping two atomic bombs was the attempt on the part of its defenders to construct a redemptive narrative through a perversion of humanistic commitment, of mass slaughter justified in the name of saving lives and winning the war.[14]  This was a humanism under siege, transformed into its terrifying opposite and placed on the side of what Edmund Wilson called the Faustian possibility of a grotesque “plague and annihilation.”[15] In part, Hiroshima and Nagasaki represented the achieved transcendence of military metaphysics now a defining feature of national identity, its more poisonous and powerful investment in the cult of scientism, instrumental rationality, and technological fanaticism—and the simultaneous marginalization of scientific evidence and intellectual rigour, even reason itself. That Hiroshima, in particular, was used to redefine America’s “national mission and its utopian possibilities”[16] was nothing short of what the late historian Howard Zinn called a “devastating commentary on our moral culture.”[17] More pointedly it serves as a grim commentary on our national insanity, which became more exacerbated over time, reaching a culmination to a form of fascist politics under the Trump administration. In most of these cases, matters of morality and justice were dissolved into technical questions and reductive chauvinism relating matters of governmentally massaged efficiency, scientific “expertise”, and American exceptionalism.  As Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell stated, the atom bomb was symbolic of the power of post-war America rather than a “ruthless weapon of indiscriminate destruction” which conveniently put to rest painful questions concerning justice, morality, and ethical responsibility.[18]

This narrative of redemption was soon challenged by a number of historians who argued that the dropping of the atom bomb had less to do with winning the war than with an attempt to put pressure on the Soviet Union to not expand their empire into territory deemed essential to American interests.[19] Protecting America’s superiority in a potential Soviet-American conflict was a decisive factor in dropping the bomb. In addition, the Truman administration needed to provide legitimation to Congress for the staggering sums of money spent on the Manhattan Project in developing the atomic weapons program and for procuring future funding necessary to continue military appropriations for ongoing research long after the war ended.[20] The late Howard Zinn went even further asserting that the government’s weak defense for the bombing of Hiroshima was not only false but was complicitous with an act of terrorism. Refusing to relinquish his role as a public intellectual willing to hold power accountable, he writes “Can we … comprehend the killing of 200,000 people to make a point about American power?”[21] Other historians also attempted to deflate this official defense of Hiroshima by providing counter-evidence that the Japanese were ready to surrender as a result of a number of factors including the nonstop bombing of 26 cities before Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the success of the naval and military blockade of Japan, and the Soviet’s entrance into the war on August 9th.[22]

Employing a weapon of mad violence against the Japanese people, the US government imagined Japan as the ultimate enemy, and then pursued tactics that blinded the American public to its own humanity and in doing so became its own worst enemy by turning against its most cherished democratic principles. In a sense, this self-imposed sightlessness functioned as part of what Jacques Derrida once called a societal autoimmune response, one in which the body’s immune system attacked its own bodily defenses.[23] Fortunately, this state of political and moral blindness did not extend to a number of critics for the next fifty years who railed aggressively against the dropping of the atomic bombs and the beginning of the nuclear age.

In the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima, there was a major debate not just about how the emergence of the atomic age and the moral, economic, scientific, military, and political forced that gave rise to it but also the ways in which the embrace of the atomic age altered the emerging nature of state power, gave rise to new forms of militarism, put American lives at risk, created environmental hazards, produced an emergent surveillance state, furthered the politics of state secrecy, and put into play a series of deadly diplomatic crisis, reinforced by the logic of brinkmanship and a belief in the totality of war.[24]

Hiroshima not only unleashed immense misery, unimaginable suffering, and wanton death on Japanese civilians, it also gave rise to anti-democratic tendencies in the United States government that put the health, safety, and liberty of the American people at risk. Shrouded in secrecy, the government machinery of death that produced the bomb did everything possible to cover up the most grotesque effects of the bomb on the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki but also the dangerous hazards it posed to the American people. Lifton and Mitchell argue convincingly that if the development of the bomb and its immediate effects were shrouded in concealment by the government that before long concealment developed into a cover up marked by government lies and the falsification of information.[25] With respect to the horrors visited upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki, films taken by Japanese and American photographers were hidden for years from the American public for fear that they would create both a moral panic and a backlash against the funding for nuclear weapons.[26]   For example, the Atomic Energy Commission lied about the extent and danger of radiation fallout going so far as to mount a campaign claiming that “fallout does not constitute a serious hazard to any living thing outside the test site.”[27] This act of falsification took place in spite of the fact that thousands of military personal were exposed to high levels of radiation within and outside of the test sites.

In addition, the Atomic Energy Commission in conjunction with the Departments of Defense, Department of Veterans’ Affairs, the Central Intelligence Agency, and other government departments engaged in a series of medical experiments designed to test the effects of different levels radiation exposure on military personal, medical patients, prisoners, and others in various sites.  According to Lifton and Mitchell, these experiments took the shape of exposing people intentionally to “radiation releases or by placing military personnel at or near ground zero of bomb tests.”[28] It gets worse. They also note that “from 1945 through 1947, bomb-grade plutonium injections were given to thirty-one patients [in a variety of hospitals and medical centers] and that all of these “experiments were shrouded in secrecy and, when deemed necessary, in lies….the experiments were intended to show what type or amount of exposure would cause damage to normal, healthy people in a nuclear war.”[29] Some of the long lasting legacies of the birth of the atomic bomb also included the rise of plutonium dumps, environmental and health risks, the cult of expertise, and the subordination of the peaceful development technology to a large scale interest in using technology for the organized production of violence. Another notable development raised by many critics in the years following the launch of the atomic age was the rise of a government mired in secrecy, the repression of dissent, and the legitimation for a type of civic illiteracy in which Americans were told to leave “the gravest problems, military and social, completely in the hands of experts and political leaders who claimed to have them under control.”[30]

All of these anti-democratic tendencies unleashed by the atomic age came under scrutiny during the latter half of the twentieth century. The terror of a nuclear holocaust, an intense sense of alienation from the commanding institutions of power, and deep anxiety about the demise of the future spawned growing unrest, ideological dissent, and massive outbursts of resistance among students and intellectuals all over the globe from the sixties until the beginning of the twenty-first century calling for the outlawing of militarism, nuclear production and stockpiling, and the nuclear propaganda machine. Literary writers extending from James Agee to Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. condemned the death-saturated machinery launched by the atomic age. Moreover, public intellectuals from Dwight Macdonald and Bertrand Russell to Helen Caldicott, Ronald Takaki, Noam Chomsky, and Howard Zinn, fanned the flames of resistance to both the nuclear arms race and weapons as well as the development of nuclear technologies.

In the United States, the mushroom cloud connected to Hiroshima is now connected to much larger forces of destruction, including a turn to instrumental reason over moral considerations, the normalization of violence in America, the militarization of local police forces, an attack on civil liberties, the rise of the surveillance state, a dangerous turn towards authoritarianism, embodied in the fascist politics unleashed by Trump and his supine, dangerous allies.  Rather than stand in opposition to preventing a nuclear mishap or the expansion of the arms industry, the United States places high up on the list of those nations that could trigger what Amy Goodman calls that “horrible moment when hubris, accident or inhumanity triggers the next nuclear attack.”[31]  Given the history of lies, deceptions, falsifications, and retreat into secrecy that characterizes the American government’s strangulating hold by the military-industrial-surveillance complex, it would be naïve to assume that the U.S. government can be trusted to act with good intentions when it comes to matters of domestic and foreign policy. Of course, matters of trust, decency, and a respect for democracy evaporated under the former Trump administration.  State terrorism and an embrace of violence as a national ideal has increasingly become the DNA of American governance and politics and is evident in government cover ups, corruption, and numerous acts of bad faith. Secrecy, lies, and deception have a long history in the United States and the issue is not merely to uncover such instances of state deception but to connect the dots over time and to map the connections, for instance, between the actions of the NSA in the early aftermath of the attempts to cover up the inhumane destruction unleashed by the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the role the NSA and other intelligence agencies play today in distorting the truth about government policies while embracing an all-compassing notion of surveillance and squelching of civil liberties, privacy, and freedom.  Militarism now pervades every aspect of society, language has become weaponized, state racism has been turned into a tool of political opportunism, and the Republican Party amounts to a criminal organization inflicting lies, conspiracy theories, voter suppression laws, and a denial of science and public health in the midst of a crisis, amounting to untold numbers of death.

Hiroshima symbolized and continues to remind us of the fact that the United States commits unspeakable acts of violence making it easier to refuse to rely on politicians, academics, and alleged experts who refuse to support a politics of transparency and serve mostly to legitimate anti-democratic, if not totalitarian policies.  Questioning a monstrous war machine whose roots lie in Hiroshima and the gangster capitalism that benefits from it is the first step in declaring nuclear weapons unacceptable ethically and politically.   This suggests a further mode of inquiry that focuses on how the rise of the military-industrial complex contributes to the escalation of nuclear weapons and what can we learn by tracing it roots to the development and use of the atom bomb. Moreover, it raises questions about the role played by intellectuals both in an out of the academy in conspiring to build the bomb and hide its effects from the American people? These are only some of the questions that need to be made visible, interrogated, and pursued in a variety of sites and public forums.

One crucial issue today is what role might intellectuals, cultural critics, journalists, and others who trade in lifting ideas into the public realm play in making clear the educative nature of politics? How might reviving the public imagination function as part of a sustained pedagogical effort to resurrect the memory of Hiroshima as both a warning and a signpost for rethinking the nature of collective struggle, reclaiming the ideals and promises a radical democracy, and producing a sustained politics and act of collective resistance aimed at abolishing nuclear weapons forever?  One issue would be to revisit the conditions that made Hiroshima and Nagasaki possible, to explore how militarism and a kind of technological fanaticism merged under the star of scientific rationality. Another step forward would be to make clear what the effects of such weapons are, to disclose the manufactured lie that such weapons make us safe. Indeed, this suggests the need for intellectuals, artists, and other cultural workers to use their skills, resources, and connections to develop massive educational campaigns that make clear both the danger of nuclear war a society armed to the teeth.

Such campaigns not only make education, consciousness, and collective struggle the center of politics, but also systemically work to both inform the public about the history of such weapons, the misery and suffering they have caused, and how they benefit the financial, government, and corporate elite who make huge amounts of money off the arms race and the promotion of nuclear deterrence and the need for a permanent warfare state. Intellectuals today appear numbed by ever developing disasters, statistics of suffering and death, the Hollywood disimagination machine with its investment in celluloid Apocalypses for which only superheroes can respond, and a consumer culture that thrives on self-interests and deplores collective political and ethical responsibility. In an age when violence turns into a spectacle, mass shootings become normalized, and violence becomes the primary language of politics, it becomes all the more difficult and yet necessary to remember the horror and legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

There are no rationales or escapes from the responsibility of preventing mass destruction due to nuclear annihilation; the appeal to military necessity is no excuse for the indiscriminate bombing of civilians whether in Hiroshima or Yemen.  The sense of horror, fear, doubt, anxiety, and powerless that followed Hiroshima and Nagasaki up until the beginning of the 21^st century seems to have faded in light of the rise of a form of gangster capitalism that embraces white nationalism, white supremacy, the Hollywood apocalypse machine, the mindlessness of consumer cultures, the growing spectacles of violence, and a militarism that is now celebrated as one of the highest ideals of American life. In a society governed by militarism, consumerism, and neoliberal savagery, it has become more difficult to assume moral, social, and political responsibility, to believe that democracy matters and is worth fighting for, to imagine a future in which responding to the suffering of others is a central element of democratic life. When historical memory fades and people turn inward, remove themselves from politics, and embrace cynicism over educated hope, a culture of evil, suffering, and existential despair. Americans now life amid a culture of indifference sustained by an endless series of manufactured catastrophes that offer a source of entertainment, sensation, and instant pleasure.

We live in an age in which violence becomes a form of entertainment rather than a source of alarm, individuals increasingly are too numb to question society, and become incapable of translating private troubles into larger public considerations. In the age following the use of the atom bomb on civilians, talk about evil, militarism, and the end of the world once stirred public debate and diverse resistance movements, now it promotes a culture of fear, moral panics, and a retreat into the black hole of the disimagination machine. In the midst of the economic crisis of 2008 and the failure of gangster capitalism to address the COVID-19 crisis, it is clear that gangster capitalism cannot provide a vision to sustain radical democratic society and works largely to destroy it.

The horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki speaks to what James Baldwin once called the “tension between hope and terror.” Hope in the absence of moral witnessing and a culture of immediacy that hawks support for conditions-environmental, economic, social, and cultural-that embrace rather than reject the incessant drive toward the apocalypse appears meaningless. Gangster capitalism has become a metaphor for the recurring atomic blast, a social, political, and moral embodiment of global destruction that needs to be stopped before it is too late.  Returning to the memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not only necessary to break out of the moral cocoon that puts reason and memory to sleep but also to rediscover both our imaginative capacities for civic literacy on behalf of the public good, especially if such action demands that we remember as Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell remark “Every small act of violence, then, has some connection with, if not sanction from, the violence of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” [32]

Manufactured catastrophes and historical amnesia—and with them a generalized sense of manufactured helplessness—now reign supreme in the new interregnum of late modernity, a kind of liminal space that serves to neutralize action, derail the challenges posed by real social and political problems such as the threat of nuclear annihilation, and substitute the escape into fantasy for any attempt to challenge the terrifying conditions that often accompany a serious crisis. Such retreats from reality blunt civic courage, dull the radical imagination, and dilute any sense of moral responsibility, plunging historical acts of violence such as Hiroshima into the abyss of political indifference, ethical insensitivity, and depoliticization.  Catastrophe, as Brad Evans has observed, speaks to an era of late modernity marked by “a closing of the political.” [33]    Resignation and acceptance of catastrophe has taken root in the ground prepared by the neoliberal notion that “nothing can be done.”

If, as the late Zygmunt Bauman argued, crisis speaks to the need to address what exactly needs to be done, then what has been lost in the age of catastrophe and historical amnesia and its overwhelming sense of precarity and uncertainty is a properly political response in the face of a pending or existing disaster. In the age of Trump, history has become a curse, and dissent is now viewed as dangerous, reminders of the horrors of injustice, the collapse of conscience, and willingness of too many to look away. The future will look much brighter and new forms of collective resistance will emerge, in part, with the recognition that the legacy of violence, death and cruelty that extends from Hiroshima to the current tsunami of violence being waged on immigrants, people of color, and peaceful protesters makes clear that no one can be a bystander if democracy is to survive.

Notes.

[1] I have drawn in this essay upon some some previous ideas of mine published on the seventieth anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I revisit them in the hope of reviving historical memory in the service of the search for justice and the need to remember that which the dead can no longer speak of.

[2] Jennifer Rosenberg, “Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Part 2),” About.com –20th Century History (March 28, 201). Online: http://history1900s.about.com/od/worldwarii/a/hiroshima_2.htm. A more powerful atom bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, and by the end of the year an estimated 70,000 had been killed. For the history of the making of the bomb, see the monumental: Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012.

[3] John Hersey, Hiroshima (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946), p. 68.

[4] The term “technological fanaticism” comes from Michael Sherry who suggested that it produced an increased form of brutality. Cited in Howard Zinn, The Bomb. (New York. N.Y.: City Lights, 2010), pp. 54-55.

[5] Oh Jung, “Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The Decision to Drop the Bomb,” Michigan Journal of History Vol 1. No. 2 (Winter 2002). Online:

http://michiganjournalhistory.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/oh_jung.pdf

[6]  See, in particular, Ronald Takaki, Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb, (Boston: Back Bay Books, 1996).

[7] Peter Bacon Hales, Outside the Gates of Eden: The Dream Of America From Hiroshima To Now. (Chicago. IL.: University of Chicago Press, 2014), p. 17.

[8] Paul Ham, Hiroshima Nagasaki: The Real Story of the Atomic Bombings and Their Aftermath (New York: Doubleday, 2011).

[9] Kensaburo Oe, Hiroshima Notes (New York: Grove Press, 1965), p. 114.

[10] Ibid., Oe, Hiroshima Notes, p. 117.

[11] Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima in America, (New York, N.Y.: Avon Books, 1995). p. 314-315. 328.

[12] Ibid., Oh Jung, “Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The Decision to Drop the Bomb.”

[13] Robert Jay Lifton, “American Apocalypse,” The Nation (December 22, 2003), p. 12.

[14] For an interesting analysis of how the bomb was defended by the New York Times and a number of high ranking politicians, especially after John Hersey’s Hiroshima appeared in The New Yorker, see Steve Rothman, “The Publication of “Hiroshima” in The New Yorker,”Herseyheroshima.cpom, (January 8, 1997). Online: http://www.herseyhiroshima.com/hiro.php

[15]  Wilson cited in Lifton and Mitchell, Hiroshima In America, p. 309.

[16] Ibid., Peter Bacon Hales, Outside The Gates of Eden: The Dream Of America From Hiroshima To Now, p. 8.

[17] Ibid., Zinn, The Bomb, p. 26.

[18] Ibid., Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima In America.

[19] See Ward Wilson, Five Myths About Nuclear Weapons (new York: Mariner Books, 2013).

[20] Ronald Takaki, Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb, (Boston: Back Bay Books, 1996), p. 39

[21] Ibid, Zinn, The Bomb, p. 45.

[22] See, for example, Gar Alperowitz’s, Atomic Diplomacy Hiroshima and Potsdam: The Use of the Atomic Bomb and the American Confrontation with Soviet Power (London: Pluto Press, 1994) and also Gar Alperowitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb (New York: Vintage, 1996). Ibid., Ham.  

[23] Giovanna Borradori, ed, “Autoimmunity: Real and Symbolic Suicides–a dialogue with Jacques Derrida,” in Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), pp. 85-136.

[24] For an informative analysis of the deep state and a politics driven by corporate power, see Bill Blunden, “The Zero-Sum Game of Perpetual War,” Counterpunch (September 2, 2014). Online: http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/09/02/the-zero-sum-game-of-perpetual-war/

[25] The following section relies on the work of both Lifton and Mitchell, Howard Zinn, and M. Susan Lindee.

[26] Greg Mitchell, “The Great Hiroshima Cover-up,” The Nation, (August 3, 2011). Online:

http://www.thenation.com/blog/162543/great-hiroshima-cover#. Also see, Greg Mitchell, “Part 1: Atomic Devastation Hidden For Decades,” WhoWhatWhy (March 26, 2014). Online: http://whowhatwhy.com/2014/03/26/atomic-devastation-hidden-decades; Greg Mitchell, “Part 2: How They Hid the Worst Horrors of Hiroshima,” WhoWhatWhy, (March 28, 2014). Online:

http://whowhatwhy.com/2014/03/28/part-2-how-they-hid-the-worst-horrors-of-hiroshima/; Greg Mitchell, “Part 3: Death and Suffering, in Living Color,” WhoWhatWhy (March 31, 2014). Online: http://whowhatwhy.com/2014/03/31/death-suffering-living-color/

[27] Ibid., Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima In America, p. 321.

[28] Ibid., Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima In America, p. 322.

[29] Ibid. Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima In America, p. 322-323.

[30] Ibid. Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima In America, p. 336.

[31] Amy Goodman, “Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 69 Year Later,” TruthDig (August 6, 2014).  Online: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/hiroshima_and_nagasaki_69_years_later_20140806

[32] Ibid.,  Lifton and Mitchell, p. 345.

[33] Brad Evans, “The Promise of Violence in the Age of Catastrophe,” Truthout (January 5, 2014). Online:

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/20977-the-promise-of-violence-in-the-age-of-catastrophe

Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and is the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy. His most recent books are America’s Education Deficit and the War on Youth (Monthly Review Press, 2013), Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education (Haymarket Press, 2014), The Public in Peril: Trump and the Menace of American Authoritarianism (Routledge, 2018), and the American Nightmare: Facing the Challenge of Fascism (City Lights, 2018), On Critical Pedagogy, 2nd edition (Bloomsbury), and Race, Politics, and Pandemic Pedagogy: Education in a Time of Crisis (Bloomsbury 2021). His website is www. henryagiroux.com.