Letter to The War System (Part 2) Sally Campbell
It is truly instructive to ponder the many ways that you operate. So much of it is hidden – beneath the radar as you might say. In fact you hide in plain sight.
Here are a few more of your ways that I’ve noticed, simply as an average person, making observations:
You fund research projects that increase the state’s powers of surveillance over the population because it’s critically important to your survival. How can you keep going without finding and watching enemies, without danger all around? Of course, you need to marginalize and vilify the people who name what you’re doing – Assange, Manning, Snowdon – ostracize & silence them! And now Electronic Intifada’s Associate Editor Asa Winstanley has been targeted – his home raided, his computers seized – because he criticizes UK complicity with Israeli war crimes. (Jonathan Cook, 17 October, 2024) You are so great with academia as well – get those smartypants students and their professors to just shut up with their calls for ceasefire and diplomacy – call them antisemitic, call in the police, get them removed, suspended, fired, get their work ostracized, whatever it takes. You are really on it!
And your use of sanctions is brilliant! To think that the US (4% of world’s population) and to a lesser extent the EU, are now “sanctioning” more than 1/4 of the world’s countries, and nearly 1/3 of the world’s economy, wow! (Center for Economic & Policy Research, The Human Consequences of Economic Sanctions, 2024.) This detailed report reviews 32 cross-national studies that assess impacts of economic sanctions on living standards. 30 of those studies found “significant declines in living standards in sanctions-targeted countries, including Afghanistan, Iran & Venezuela.” Venezuela, for example, has seen the exodus of 25% of their population since 2017. How much of that is due to the War System’s crippling sanctions? As Congressman Jim McGovern, Chair of US House Rules Committee, stated in a letter to Biden (May, 2021): “Economic pain is the means by which the sanctions are supposed to work….it is not the Venezuelan officials who suffer the costs. It is the people. Credible sources have consistently found that sanctions have worsened the humanitarian crisis in the country.” (CEPR report, above.) Sanctioning may well create an “immigrant problem”, but hopefully you’ll get the toadying government you want there soon. In any event, it’s never bad for the War System.
Having this huge “immigrant problem” means more work for police and border patrols, more gun sales, more border fences to build and buses to run those pesky immigrants up to the northern cities where they can be unceremoniously dumped – problem solved!
As the War System, you have to be constantly on alert. So much to do, so many avenues to pursue right now. There’s Ukraine War, war in Sudan, Israel’s War on Gaza and now Lebanon, Syria too, Iran the latest hit, Russia the great villain again, and with China’s economy a growing “threat”, your “Pivot to China” makes good sense. That will call for endless new arms, more manoeuvres in their territory, more focus on their “foreign interference”, yes! Lots of potential there. Enemies galore. Forget the war-weary populace, just keep changing the focus, there’ll always be a villain somewhere.
And all this threat from everywhere makes nuclear arms build-up just seem so normal and necessary, right? What with the interoperability you’ve got going within NATO and its many “partners”, all locked into your plans, way to go! It can’t look as if it’s one empire only that’s at constant threat from its enemies, far better if the whole Western world thinks that way.
Ukraine – a great example of how to get the Russians back on the arch enemy list. Russia and the rest of Europe were cooperating so well economically, prior to 2022. A bit of a problem for US empire, but easily solved it would seem. “Support” the ouster of Ukraine President Yanukovych in 2014, get “our man” in there as US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland put it, station NATO troops on Russia’s borders, blow up Russia’s Nordstream pipeline to Germany, (see Seymour Hersh’s Substack) and generally provoke to the point that Russia invades Ukraine illegally and now everyone’s dependent on you again! And get the media to call it an “unprovoked” invasion, even better. Always defend by attacking.
Israel is a bit more complicated because you’re conducting a genocide there; it’s much more visible, uglier than Ukraine. People don’t like it. And it seems as if you have some doubts about Israel’s ability/desire to keep these wars “contained”. Oh well, you are a well-oiled machine; you’ll survive as long as the people stay passive and buy the narrative.
But I’m wondering: what would the world be like if you decided to retire? What could it be like? As you love the work so much, maybe it would have to be a case of mandatory retirement. You would be paid an enormous amount in “retirement benefits”, and it would all be worth it for the rest of us because of the now trillions we would save every year which could go to facing our climate crisis, housing shortages, poverty reduction, education, health care and reconciliation work. Oh my, just Imagine.