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Kevin's Reviews > The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner
The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner
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Kevin's review
bookshelves: critique-violence, 1-how-the-world-works, critique-imperialism-america, critique-red-scare, zzz-reread
Oct 21, 2018
bookshelves: critique-violence, 1-how-the-world-works, critique-imperialism-america, critique-red-scare, zzz-reread
Lucky escapes do not resolve crises; nuclear disarmament needs to be revived.
(2022 Update):
--I was recently reminded of how I first started exploring global issues by hosting documentary nights (which quickly became lecture/interview nights), and what a treasure journalist Paul Jay () has been with his interviews of pretty much all my favorites (Vijay Prashad, Michael Hudson, Gerald Horne, Chris Hedges, Medea Benjamin, etc.).
...Note: my favorite interviewer these days is Rania Kalek's “Dispatches� on BreakThrough News:
--Revisiting Paul Jay's latest content on his outlet “The Analysis�, I'm reminded of his focus on 2 existential crises: #1 Climate/ecological collapse and #2 Nuclear war. These couple have been on my radar since I started with Chomsky (Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe), but like everyone I am also guilty of neglecting nuclear war. So, I'm relieved to see Paul Jay working on a documentary of this book with the author, whistleblower legend Daniel Ellsberg ().
The Brilliant The Dire:
--Western history/media will have you believe the nuclear crisis is a Cold War-era issue, only to be dusted off as a threat (to countries that already have nukes) from “rogue states� as the empire sets off for their next invasion. Indeed, as Vijay reminds us, US intervention is the key driver of nuclear proliferation; North Korea just has to look at what happened to Iraq and Libya after they gave up their nuclear weapons programs:
--“Pentagon Papers� whistleblower Ellsberg details US's constant aggression with nukes rather than “deterrence�/“defensive� measures, as declassified documents reveal awareness of German/Japanese/Soviet/Chinese capacities and admissions that nuclear escalation for deterrence was not needed/not the actual aims; thus, the book's title “Nuclear War Planner� (rather than nuclear deterrence planner), where US fanatics planned various first-strike scenarios and Rapture-fantasies of post-nuclear-war victories (see Paul Jay on US religious extremism + nuclear annihilation: ). It should be no surprise that more attention was placed on fantasizing first-strikes than preventing accidents (including numerous false alarms)!
--It's difficult to imagine this crisis becoming more acute, but this sprawling Doomsday Machine has only expanded since the Cold War, given US capitalist profits are built on military spending (US military industrial complex) rather than social spending (see below). Thus, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Doomsday Clock (estimate of likelihood of human-made annihilation) is at all-time extremes today(!), even compared to the height of Cold War's Cuban Missile Crisis!
--Further lowlights of this “institutionalized madness�: origins of aerial bombardment targeting cities (civilian targets), firestorms, risking “atmospheric ignition�, the Cuban Missile Crisis (or, how-to-bluff-our-way-to-oblivion, with nukes), Nixon’s Madman Theory (with nukes), US/NATO vs. the world (in terms of nuclear first-use policy), “nuclear winters�, and a whole bunch of we-learned-50-years-later-how-much-worse-it-really-was-and-things-have-gotten-worse-all-without-public-attention... As usual, the real world is more unbelievable than fiction (despite the best efforts of the cult classic “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb� film).
The Missing:
--Ellsberg decides not to sacrifice rigorous details for the sake of accessibility. So, while this topic is crucial for general readers, certain parts have plenty of names and acronyms; a nice intro is Chomsky’s Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe, and I'm looking forward to Paul Jay's documentary.
--In a recent interview with Paul Jay, Ellsberg says he has been researching more on the political economy of the military industrial complex, citing Harry S. Truman and the War Scare of 1948: A Successful Campaign to Deceive the Nation on how the Cold War arms race bailed out the US aircraft industry. I've been looking into this topic with Drums of War, Drums of Development: The Formation of a Pacific Ruling Class and Industrial Transformation in East and Southeast Asia, 1945-1980.
...This is the irrationality of capitalism, where the bottom line is profit. The Roaring '20s (1920's) profit boom crashed into the endless Great Depression where factories were kept idle and crops stockpiled/wasted while the workers (without means of production by definition) starved, since there were no optimistic expectations for capitalist profits (the sole reason for investment/production under capitalism).
...This was only resolved with the rise of Fascism (brute force to revive capitalism) and the greatest war in human history. WWII was the “creative destruction� to wipe away stagnant capital and innovate new markets (war, and everything that supplies wars: War is a Racket).
--However, the US were terrified of the return of another depression once WWII ended (along with its war markets and its social mobilization of private capital). Capitalist profits require a compound annual growth rate (exponential rather than linear growth!) in perpetuity (never mind our finite planet) in order to not crash, so turning the colossal US war productivity of tanks and bombs into mass consumer automobiles and refrigerators and expecting compound growth clearly is not enough. Thus, the Cold War's “Military Keynesianism� (State spending to keep rising demand to absorb capitalism's production), risking nuclear annihilation to (in part) keep capitalism from spiraling into depression. For more:
-The Global Minotaur: America, the True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the Future of the World Economy
-Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance
-Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present
--We desperately need to bring back the nuclear disarmament movement that peaked in the 1970s-80s, as this has been forgotten with the end of the Cold War (the remaining movements now focus on anti-nuclear power). The Global South's decolonization period offers innovations in organizing for nuclear disarmament (i.e. Non-Aligned Movement, NAM):
-The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World
-The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South
(2022 Update):
--I was recently reminded of how I first started exploring global issues by hosting documentary nights (which quickly became lecture/interview nights), and what a treasure journalist Paul Jay () has been with his interviews of pretty much all my favorites (Vijay Prashad, Michael Hudson, Gerald Horne, Chris Hedges, Medea Benjamin, etc.).
...Note: my favorite interviewer these days is Rania Kalek's “Dispatches� on BreakThrough News:
--Revisiting Paul Jay's latest content on his outlet “The Analysis�, I'm reminded of his focus on 2 existential crises: #1 Climate/ecological collapse and #2 Nuclear war. These couple have been on my radar since I started with Chomsky (Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe), but like everyone I am also guilty of neglecting nuclear war. So, I'm relieved to see Paul Jay working on a documentary of this book with the author, whistleblower legend Daniel Ellsberg ().
--Western history/media will have you believe the nuclear crisis is a Cold War-era issue, only to be dusted off as a threat (to countries that already have nukes) from “rogue states� as the empire sets off for their next invasion. Indeed, as Vijay reminds us, US intervention is the key driver of nuclear proliferation; North Korea just has to look at what happened to Iraq and Libya after they gave up their nuclear weapons programs:
--“Pentagon Papers� whistleblower Ellsberg details US's constant aggression with nukes rather than “deterrence�/“defensive� measures, as declassified documents reveal awareness of German/Japanese/Soviet/Chinese capacities and admissions that nuclear escalation for deterrence was not needed/not the actual aims; thus, the book's title “Nuclear War Planner� (rather than nuclear deterrence planner), where US fanatics planned various first-strike scenarios and Rapture-fantasies of post-nuclear-war victories (see Paul Jay on US religious extremism + nuclear annihilation: ). It should be no surprise that more attention was placed on fantasizing first-strikes than preventing accidents (including numerous false alarms)!
--It's difficult to imagine this crisis becoming more acute, but this sprawling Doomsday Machine has only expanded since the Cold War, given US capitalist profits are built on military spending (US military industrial complex) rather than social spending (see below). Thus, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Doomsday Clock (estimate of likelihood of human-made annihilation) is at all-time extremes today(!), even compared to the height of Cold War's Cuban Missile Crisis!
--Further lowlights of this “institutionalized madness�: origins of aerial bombardment targeting cities (civilian targets), firestorms, risking “atmospheric ignition�, the Cuban Missile Crisis (or, how-to-bluff-our-way-to-oblivion, with nukes), Nixon’s Madman Theory (with nukes), US/NATO vs. the world (in terms of nuclear first-use policy), “nuclear winters�, and a whole bunch of we-learned-50-years-later-how-much-worse-it-really-was-and-things-have-gotten-worse-all-without-public-attention... As usual, the real world is more unbelievable than fiction (despite the best efforts of the cult classic “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb� film).
The Missing:
--Ellsberg decides not to sacrifice rigorous details for the sake of accessibility. So, while this topic is crucial for general readers, certain parts have plenty of names and acronyms; a nice intro is Chomsky’s Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe, and I'm looking forward to Paul Jay's documentary.
--In a recent interview with Paul Jay, Ellsberg says he has been researching more on the political economy of the military industrial complex, citing Harry S. Truman and the War Scare of 1948: A Successful Campaign to Deceive the Nation on how the Cold War arms race bailed out the US aircraft industry. I've been looking into this topic with Drums of War, Drums of Development: The Formation of a Pacific Ruling Class and Industrial Transformation in East and Southeast Asia, 1945-1980.
...This is the irrationality of capitalism, where the bottom line is profit. The Roaring '20s (1920's) profit boom crashed into the endless Great Depression where factories were kept idle and crops stockpiled/wasted while the workers (without means of production by definition) starved, since there were no optimistic expectations for capitalist profits (the sole reason for investment/production under capitalism).
...This was only resolved with the rise of Fascism (brute force to revive capitalism) and the greatest war in human history. WWII was the “creative destruction� to wipe away stagnant capital and innovate new markets (war, and everything that supplies wars: War is a Racket).
--However, the US were terrified of the return of another depression once WWII ended (along with its war markets and its social mobilization of private capital). Capitalist profits require a compound annual growth rate (exponential rather than linear growth!) in perpetuity (never mind our finite planet) in order to not crash, so turning the colossal US war productivity of tanks and bombs into mass consumer automobiles and refrigerators and expecting compound growth clearly is not enough. Thus, the Cold War's “Military Keynesianism� (State spending to keep rising demand to absorb capitalism's production), risking nuclear annihilation to (in part) keep capitalism from spiraling into depression. For more:
-The Global Minotaur: America, the True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the Future of the World Economy
-Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance
-Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present
--We desperately need to bring back the nuclear disarmament movement that peaked in the 1970s-80s, as this has been forgotten with the end of the Cold War (the remaining movements now focus on anti-nuclear power). The Global South's decolonization period offers innovations in organizing for nuclear disarmament (i.e. Non-Aligned Movement, NAM):
-The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World
-The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South
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Chris
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rated it 5 stars
May 28, 2021 08:20PM
This is late but this is a brilliant review, Kevin.
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Chris wrote: "This is late but this is a brilliant review, Kevin."Cheers Chris, it was much easier back then when I didn't get bogged down by details haha
Just this morning, listening to Rania interview Wolfgang Streeck, I found myself reflecting on the potency of her interviews over the past years and how much I have gained from her work, the work of Eugene Puryear, their collaboration at Breakthrough News and BT’s partnership with Brian Becker and The Socialist Program. I also regularly listen to Paul Jay and I too am looking forward to his documentary with Ellesburg, though I should probably read this book in the meantime.
Let’s hope the situation in Ukraine doesn’t expand to direct US/NATO troops being deployed to battle against Russia, thus bringing us all closer to global nuclear war. We do seem perilously close at the moment - though as Chomsky constantly warns - our proximity to nuclear destruction of the species is never too far off, with many instances of near misses peppering the historical record.
Anton wrote: "Just this morning, listening to Rania interview Wolfgang Streeck, I found myself reflecting on the potency of her interviews over the past years and how much I have gained from her work, the work o..."That's great to hear, Anton! Their videos are definitely useful to add to the toolbox, to provide accessible analysis without compromise. Reading dense books is so time-consuming, indeed Streeck's book has been unfinished on my shelves for years.
Do you listen/watch "Give the People What They Want" from People's Dispatch? Vijay Prashad is one of the hosts. I find it particularly helpful as a weekly world news round-up (with particular attention on the censored Global South), given how time consuming it would be for me to gather all the sources!
Russia/Ukraine: I'm reminded of some anti-imperialist leftists downplaying this in the sense of critiquing Western hypocrisy ignoring Yemen, Palestine, etc. While I agree with the critique, we cannot expect a fair game; we have to account for a level of annihilationist insanity with the US military industrial complex and not project our own rationality onto them, thus any escalation of an already dire nuclear situation is way too adventurist.
I'm also reminded of Mao's nuclear war/"paper tiger" quotes, although sadly nuclear weapons are a deterrent against direct US military intervention for emerging countries. China has been quite pragmatic militarily especially relative to its economic rise, thankfully!
Still looking for a foundational synthesis of the history of capitalism and militarism. In consideration: David McNally's "Blood and Money: War, Slavery, Finance, and Empire"
John wrote: "Still looking for a foundational synthesis of the history of capitalism and militarism. In consideration: David McNally's "Blood and Money: War, Slavery, Finance, and Empire""R.I.P. Daniel Ellsberg
I really need to catch up on McNally; I first encountered his work in a class project analyzing Canada's post-WWII economic development from 2 perspectives:
a) Neo-Weberian (developmental state), vs.
b) World-Systems (esp. class struggle/imperialism, mostly featuring Paul Kellogg's Escape from the Staple Trap: Canadian Political Economy after Left Nationalism, wish I reviewed the book while it was all still fresh in my head; anyways, McNally came up here I believe).
On capitalism/militarism, I was also curious of Andrew Cockburn's The Spoils of War: Power, Profit and the American War Machine (although it is a more narrow scope), but reviews suggest it's just a compilation of articles.
