Of Donald Trump you may think what you want, but what distinguishes this undiplomatic man from his politically "correct" predecessor Biden is his sincere intention to make a fundamental course correction after decades of misguided developments. This is especially true of the absurd escalation course of the MIC and NATO militarists. - However, there is still a very dangerous window of time to bridge before Trump's inauguration in mid-January.
The Biden administration has underlined this with its recent initiatives. Firstly, medium-range missiles were approved for use deep into Russian territory, secondly, landmines that violate humanitarian principles were delivered and thirdly, a recommendation was made. After hundreds of thousands of soldiers have already been sacrificed in the defense of Ukraine, Biden suggests that the age limit for being called to the front should be lowered from 25 to 18. This "wise" recommendation from an old man who has largely lived his life is deeply immoral. Cheating young people out of their lives for goals that can be achieved peacefully stems from the same empathy-free mentality displayed by autocrats of the past, who have always unhesitatingly sacrificed people in the exercise of their power.
In order to make the long overdue departure from the militaristic error a final one, it is important to anchor some lessons from the distant and recent past deep in the political consciousness of citizens. Our Stone Age ancestors also waged wars against each other. However, in terms of brutality, these were far less than the slaughter that civilization has now brought us. One can draw conclusions about the earlier conditions based on observations of tribal cultures that still live today or until recently as hunter-gatherers, including the Pygmies of Inner Africa, the Bushmen of southern Africa and the Indians of the Amazon region.
It is easy to identify the power factor behind the increasingly rampant militarism. As power tends to reinforce itself, autocratic empires emerged early on, expanding at the expense of weaker neighbors. As a look at history shows and today's politics confirms, in this monopoly game of the rulers, the scheming and ruthless egocentrics were more likely to have the advantage than fair idealists. The interests of the citizens were largely sidelined as a result - and so were freedom-loving people. People would be aware of this sad result if they were honest with themselves. Then they would realize that only a minority of their fellow human beings belong to the authentically free and fair character type who doesn’t want to be patronized by others and who also have no ambitions to patronize or defraud others.
The majority, however, are those who are subordinate and who uncritically follow every instruction from above, no matter how absurd (or cruel), but who take on authoritarian traits in higher positions and ignore legitimate opposition. This consideration shows that humanity is on a disastrously wrong path of development.
The emergence of the liberal USA with the Declaration of Independence in 1776 offered a huge opportunity to correct this course in the long term. The liberal-democratic concept with its then still fair market economy made the country an economic and thus automatically military superpower over the course of the 19th century. European and some Asian countries followed suit - a peacefully growing community of values with global integration power was emerging.
But since the presidency of William McKinley at the latest, the United States has allowed itself to be misled from this course of being a successful role model to that of an unsuccessful militaristic world policeman. After two world wars, real civil wars within the European civilization and in the midst of the disastrous Vietnam War, President Dwight D. Eisenhower felt compelled to issue a very serious warning in his farewell speech in January 1961. This warning was about the rapidly growing influence of the MIC, the military-industrial complex made up of high-ranking representatives from the military, arms industry and politics.
But in the atmosphere of forgetful citizens, uncritical media and politicians, the MIC was able to develop into a state within a state that was only superficially controlled. In the Vietnam War, it was the first to stage the full version of an absurd course of self-destruction of a superpower at maximum cost to the state treasury. After 20 years of procrastinating at half-strength, defeat was inevitable and has severely damaged the superpower's reputation. With a short, hard blow according to Niccolo Machiavelli's rule, it would have been easy to put a victorious end to the nightmare within a few months - with 90% fewer victims and 90% less costs. It is proven that the Afghanistan mission could also have been brought to a victorious end in December 2001 - but the George W. Bush administration did not want that. - https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/08/18/taliban-surrendered-2001.
Instead, the strategy of a half-hearted, endlessly protracted war - which had already proven itself in Vietnam from the point of view of the arms industry - was repeated again in Afghanistan. After 20 years of inadequate military deployment and amateurish and inefficient efforts to democratize the country, the adventure also ended in debacle. This defeat under Biden’s presidency, sealed with a particularly embarrassing withdrawal of the CIA-led military in August 2021, was the culmination of a disingenuous policy towards the Islamic cultural area.
Between inconsistent counterterrorism, support for supposedly friendly extremists and constant focus on helping civilians in need, this pseudo-politics amounts to a submissive appeasement of an actually superior cultural area towards a weaker one. The mere obedient opening to a permanent invasion by Muslim migration flows is one of the symptoms.
This would not even be the fundamental problem if Islam had developed into a fair religion compatible with democracy and freedom. But Western appeasement has allowed it to harden into a strongly autocratic political ideology that does not conform to the rule of law. This threatens the future of liberal constitutional democracy with Sharia and "morally" justified terror, among other things, more than Leninism ever did.
But Joe Biden also knew how to build on the second side of the suicidal course that the Western nations have been led on by the MIC militarists for over 100 years. This side is in the tradition of both past world wars and the Russian October Revolution. In these wars fought within European civilization, in sharp contrast to Vietnam and Afghanistan, half-hearted restraint was not the order of the day, but the merciless use of the entire destructive capacity.
It is easy to understand with a sober mind that the Ukraine war has the potential for the self-destruction of European civilization in this sense. - But the mainstream media, which continue to be uncritical, are also blind to this danger. In particular, they did not warn as appropriately about the escalation course of Biden and his militaristic comrades. On a par with the British, who delivered additional weapons to Ukraine even shortly before the Russian invasion in February 2022 and later also outpaced the other European NATO countries with the first cruise missiles and DU projectiles, the Biden government has paved the way for a new dimension of carnage with its cluster munitions. A strategic advantage could not have arisen, as Russia also has such weapons in its depot for the case of escalation.
The MIC militarists, who have become too powerful as a result of insufficient democratic control, have managed to sacrifice millions of human lives over the post-war decades for the result of massively endangering the survival of this civilization and its liberal democracy - it is high time to learn lessons.