No, you heard it right. Last week in a Fox News appearance, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said outright that the war in Ukraine is “about money.”
Namely, Graham told Fox News host Sean Hannity that the U.S. stands to financially gain from Ukraine’s vast agricultural sector and “two to seven trillion dollars’ worth” of rare earth minerals alike in a prospective wartime deal with the war-torn, albeit resource-wealthy, nation.
“This war is about money. People don’t talk much about it. But you know, the richest country in all of Europe for rare earth minerals is Ukraine. Two to seven trillion dollars’ worth of minerals that are rare earth minerals, very relevant to the 21st century,” Graham declared. “Ukraine’s ready to do a deal with us, not the Russians. So it’s in our interest to make sure that Russia doesn’t take over the place.”
“[Ukraine] is the bread basket of…the developing world,” Graham mused. “Fifty percent of all the food going to Africa comes from Ukraine.”
Graham also emphasized that the incoming Trump administration is uniquely positioned to cash out on such resources. “Donald Trump is going to do a deal to get our money back, to enrich ourselves with rare earth minerals. A good deal for Ukraine and us,” Graham said. “And he’s going to bring peace.”
Trump has suggested repeatedly that he wants to bring all sides to the table to talk in order to end the war. Graham has been consistently on the other side of the debate where he has wanted Ukraine to keep fighting at all costs.
Yet Graham insists that Ukraine will benefit from the prospective “deal” he describes. His own history of hawkish comments, where he previously said that “with American weapons and money, Ukraine will fight Russia to the last Ukrainian,” suggests Ukrainians' best interests and meaningful peace both rank low amongst his priorities.
Notably, this isn’t the first time Graham has suggested that the U.S. could benefit from access to Ukraine’s natural resources. “[Ukrainians are] sitting on a trillion dollars’ worth of minerals that could be good to our economy,” Graham said in a video clip from September, where he was standing next to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Meanwhile, war fatalities continue to mount, with the Wall Street Journal reporting in September that over a million people have died or been wounded in the Russia-Ukraine war since its inception. To hawks like Graham, such fatalities seem to be an acceptable price to pay in an apparent bid for Ukraine’s natural resources.
Stavroula Pabst is a reporter for Responsible Statecraft.
Top image credit: U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) attends a news briefing amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine March 18, 2024. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich
The Bunker appears originally at the Project on Government Oversight and is republished here with permission.
Bomber builder losing money … for now
When playing Pentagon poker, when is a loss not a loss? When reading the tea leaves convinces you that today’s loss will yield a bigger win tomorrow. You knew this was coming as soon as the Air Force general in charge of dropping nuclear bombs dropped one last month: The Pentagon’s planned buy of 100 B-21 bombers isn’t enough. He really, honestly, truthinessly needs 145 of the bat-winged warplanes.
Things have changed since that original number was set in 2011, and it just won’t do in today’s world, General Anthony Cotton, chief of the U.S. Strategic Command, said March 18. “The production rate that was agreed upon was, I think, in [that] geopolitical environment. That’s a little different than the geopolitical environment that we will face for decades to come,” he said. “Hence, I, as a customer, would love to see larger production rates.”
So, as day follows night, 35 days later Northrop announced that it was taking a $477 million loss on its B-21 program. Largely, that’s so it — wait for it! — can build more of the highly-classified bombers, faster. Much of that sum is dedicated to an unspecified production “process change” for the B-21. “That process change supports the accelerated production rates,” Kathy Warden, Northrop’s CEO, said April 22. “We can ramp beyond the quantities in the program of record,” she added, referring to the Air Force’s piddling 100-bomber buy. “Which is something that we and the government decided was important for the optionality to support the scenarios that they have been looking at to increase the current build rate.”
“Optionality”?
Of course, pretty much everything about the B-21 Raider, including its “build rate” — how many a year we’ll get to buy — remains secret. But Northrop’s website does have a handy-dandy FAQ section dedicated to the bomber. “The U.S. Air Force has stated plans to acquire at least 100 aircraft,” it says. “Some defense analysts believe that the Air Force should plan to purchase at least 200 B-21s.” Gotta wonder how much of a bonus the PR whiz pocketed who added “at least 200.”
The B-21 made its first flight late in 2023, and five more bombers are now under construction in California. Capable of carrying both nuclear and non-nuclear weapons, the B-21 is slated to go operational in 2027. Calculating its cost can be challenging. Bloomberg reported in 2022 that the 100 bombers would cost $89.1 billion to produce, or $891 million a copy. But that’s based on 2019 dollars. While the bomber may have some ability to elude enemy radar, it can’t elude inflation.
Hurray for Lockheed! Sure, that’s not The Bunker’s usual take on the Pentagon’s biggest contractor. But on April 22, the company did something refreshing. Instead of challenging competitor Boeing’s recent winning bid to build the Air Force’s new F-47 fighter, it decided to improve the existing Lockheed-built F-35.
Now granted, the F-35 continues to be plagued by cost, production, and readiness woes. But when defense contractors lose a major contract, many opt to file a “bid protest” with the Government Accountability Office in hopes of reversing the decision. It rarely works and only serves to delay the program.
In this case, Lockheed has instead decided to cram some of the unspecified new technologies it has developed for its losing F-47 sixth-generation bid into the fifth-generation F-35. “There are techniques and capabilities … that were developed for [our F-47 bid] that we can now apply here,” Lockheed CEO Jim Taiclet said. “We’re basically going to take the [F-35's] chassis and turn it into a Ferrari.” That’s pretty funny, because four years ago the Air Force’s top officer said the F-35 was already a Ferrari. (And for all those years you thought the “F” in F-16s, F-35s, etc., stood for “Fighter.”)
But what’s not funny is something else Taiclet said: “My challenge here on my aeronautics team is, let’s get 80% of six-gen capability at half the price … they wouldn’t have agreed to this if they didn’t think there was a path to get there.” (But don’t think that’ll be a bargain. Best estimates suggest that F-47s will end up costing $300 million each, meaning a supercharged F-35 would cost $150 million.)
Why should it take losing a contract to compel a contractor to build something nearly as good for half the price? No doubt there’s some Lockheed hyperbole there. But it’s no more hyperbolic than the hypersonic frenzy used to justify the F-47. Here’s an inside tip: Foreign foes are never as threatening as those with an (in)vested interest in fighting them claim. And its corollary: Shiny new U.S. weapons are never as good when they roll off the assembly line as they are at conception.
The death of decapitation
You may have seen images of Pope Francis in his open coffin last week. That’s because the Vatican wanted you to see them. But what if some terror group — or rogue state — didn’t want the world to know their leader had been killed by a U.S. missile strike, or offed during a capture-or-kill mission that defaulted to the death option?
That’s no longer a theoretical question. “Synthetic media may allow terrorist organizations to simulate the continued presence of deceased leaders, undermining public belief in their deaths,” Army Lieutenant Colonel Matthew J. Fecteau wrote April 23 at West Point’s Modern War Institute website. “Generative AI is not just a tactical threat; it is a strategic disruptor that challenges the foundations of belief, perception, and reality in modern warfare.”
In other words, the next time a good guy kills a bad guy, AI could generate a fake living bad guy to declare: “You missed.”
James Holmes of the Naval War College autopsies the 1989 blast aboard the USS Iowa that killed 47 sailors and details how and why the Navy compounded the tragedy with its disgraceful investigation, April 23 in The National Interest.
A new book by Phil Tinline, reviewed in the New York Times April 27, examines a 1967 magazine article that argued that war is “the essential economic stabilizer of modern societies.” It was a crafty hoax, but so well done, that it infects U.S. society even today.
Thanks for infecting The Bunker with your attention this week. Consider forwarding it to friends so they can subscribe here.
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Top image credit: Ursula Von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas via Alexandros Michailidis / Shutterstock.com
Amid questions of the over-militarization of U.S. foreign policy and the illusion of global primacy, the European Union is charging headlong in the opposite direction, appearing to be eagerly grasping for an American-esque primacist role.
Last month, the European Commission, the EU’s executive body, proposed the Security Action for Europe (SAFE), a part of the EU’s sweeping, $900 billion rearmament plans. This ambition, driven by elites in Brussels, Berlin, Paris and Warsaw rather than broad support from Europe’s diverse populations, reflects a dangerous delusion: that, in the face of a purported U.S. retreat, the EU has to overtake the mantle as leading defender of the “rules-based liberal world order.”
Not everybody in the EU is on board though. Countries like Hungary, Slovakia, Italy and Spain are known for their less than enthusiastic embrace of the rearmament fervor. Last week, a voice of dissent came from the European Parliament, elected directly by the EU citizens — unlike the Commission.
The European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs unanimously rejected the legal basis proposed by the Commission for SAFE, namely Article 122 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). This is more than just an arcane legal-technocratic detail: Article 122 allows the Commission to invoke urgency to bypass the European Parliament and secure approval for its proposals with only a qualified majority in the Council. As the foreign policy decisions are taken by consensus, the purpose of this maneuver is to eliminate potential vetoes from skeptical member countries.
Historically used for crises like COVID-19, this procedure is now being weaponized by Commission hawks, led by Ursula von der Leyen, its president, to operationalize the “rearm” concept. Von der Leyen, alongside High Representative for Foreign Policy Kaja Kallas, a former prime minister of Estonia, has leaned on alarmist rhetoric, exaggerating external threats — particularly from Russia — to justify this rush. This fear-driven narrative pressures all member states to align with a Russia-centric security agenda, often at odds with their own priorities: it is true that Russia is undeniably perceived as a serious threat in the Baltic states and Poland, hence support for hardline policies, but Hungary and Slovakia, on the contrary, have long advocated for a negotiated end to the war in Ukraine. And Spain and Italy treat migration and failing states in the southern Mediterranean, not Russia, as their main security risks.
Yet the Commission’s move represents a significant overreach, sidelining the Parliament and potentially some member states, a process that undermines democracy. By invoking urgency, the Commission seeks to fast-track SAFE without the scrutiny required for such a transformative shift. The Legal Committee’s rejection of that route highlights the Commission’s failure to justify this urgency or explain why alternative legal routes were ignored.
This vote is procedural — it shouldn’t be confused with a principled stand against rearmament. In fact, the Parliament’s hawkish majority, comprising parties from the center-right and center-left, has endorsed the concept in a resolution on the matter. The opposition came mostly from the right-wing Patriots for Europe (the political group that includes the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s party and the French National Rally, currently the most popular party in France), the Left and a number of independent MEPs.
The vote in the Legal Committee remains focused on technicalities. Some MEPs, particularly from France, even push for a stronger “buy European” clause in SAFE to benefit the continent’s arms industry, whose lobbyists are increasingly active in Brussels. The Parliament, or its dedicated bodies, such as the foreign affairs and defense and security committees, have not so far addressed the issue with strategic clarity — such as asking questions about SAFE’s purpose, the EU’s intended adversaries, or why such a massive military buildup is necessary with such urgency.
Even more worryingly, the EU’s militarization drive exacerbates the neglect of diplomacy. While the elites are indulging in these delusions, EU citizens seem to be much more skeptical about dramatic increase in defense spending. Moreover, the EU, unlike the U.S., has neither the capability to sustain this path, nor the protections the U.S. enjoys, like being buffered by two oceans and situated between unthreatening neighbors.
Meanwhile, in its pursuit of an elusive hard power, the EU is busy squandering the soft power which used to define its global influence, turning a blind eye to Israel’s crimes in Gaza, downplaying democratic backsliding in Turkey, and groveling to autocrats like Azerbaijan’s Aliyev — all that for at best marginal gains.
A vote in the Legal Committee won’t address all these issues, but it does offer a tiny glimmer of hope. It could slow the militarization process, allowing elected representatives and member states to scrutinize SAFE’s long-term ramifications, challenge the Commission’s fear-driven overreach, and prioritize diplomacy with adversaries. If the Commission persists in its power grab, it is liable to challenge, by the European Parliament or member states, in the EU Court of Justice.
The reckless ambition to emulate U.S.-style primacy without its power or protections, risks entrenching a militarized future for Europe at the expense of its democratic principles, its diverse securit needs, and its survival in a region where missteps could prove catastrophic.
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Top photo credit: A VNAF UH-1H Huey loaded with Vietnamese evacuees on the deck of the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Midway (CV-41) during Operation Frequent Wind, 29 April 1975. (US Navy photo)
The photographs, television images and newspaper stories make it perfectly clear: there was an urgency, a frenzy even, as the U.S. Embassy in Saigon shuttered and its diplomats and staff were evacuated, along with other military, journalists, and foreigners, as well as thousands of Vietnamese civilians, who all wanted out of the country as the North Vietnamese victors rolled into the city center.
It was April 30, 1975 — 50 years ago today — yet the nightmare left behind that day only accentuated the failure of the United States, along with the South Vietnamese army, to resist a takeover by the communists under the leadership of the North. It was not only an extraordinarily bloody chapter for Vietnam (well over 1.5 million military and civilian deaths, depending on estimates, from 1965 to 1975), but a dark episode for America, too.
Beyond the failure of Washington’s Cold War policy — that intervening in Vietnam’s post-Colonial struggles for independence was necessary to prevent the “dominoes” of communism from tumbling across Southeast Asia — more than 55,000 Americans were killed. An untold number who returned suffered lifelong injuries, impacts of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and illnesses and other symptoms due to Agent Orange and other toxic exposures.
The nation had been ruptured politically and socially over the war, a divide that one could say has never really healed.
Yet ironically, Washington’s proclivity to intervene in other countries’ affairs and to use military power as the first resort has only grown. It would seem the true lessons of Vietnam were left on that iconic rooftop from which the last helicopter left Saigon 50 years ago.
Some say after WWII, U.S. power and intervention has always maintained the global liberal order and that Vietnam was a “mistake” — a one-off. Others say it was a sign that the pretense of America as the "indispensable nation” was folly from the beginning, that the Cold War had blinded us to the realities of the world and the limits of military intervention.
So we asked experts, both in geopolitics and history, what they think:
Was the failure of Vietnam a feature or a bug of U.S. foreign policy after WWII?
Andrew Bacevich, co-founder and Emeritus Board Chair of the Quincy Institute
The United States has yet to reckon fully with the causes and consequences of the Vietnam War. Why? Because American foreign policy elites have spent the last 50 years engaged in a concerted effort to evade their responsibility for that disaster. Their success in doing so helps explain the dubious record of U.S. policy since. Yesterday's mistakes become the basis for tomorrow's actions.
Greg Daddis, director of the Center of War and Society at San Diego State University, and board member at the Quincy Institute
Americans came home from World War II with a faith in their power — and, increasingly, in their responsibility — to maintain a stable international order in the wake of such a catastrophic global conflict. That faith was coupled with fears of a growing communist threat, a threat seemingly existential to policymakers and ordinary citizens alike. These universalizing fears, coupled with a faith in military power’s transformative capacities overseas, ultimately would lead the United States to embark upon its misguided Southeast Asian crusade. Yet this wasn’t a “one-off.” Throughout the Cold War, the American policy elite committed the nation to conflicts that, far from furthering U.S. national security interests, only brought death and misery to peoples abroad. They feared the potentially toxic mixture of self-determination and communism as emerging nations grappled with new identities in the postcolonial era. And they held faith, even in the face of contrary evidence, that war created a safer global environment in its destructive aftermath.
Carolyn Eisenberg, author of “Fire and Rain: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Wars in Southeast Asia”
Lessons not learned. Absent a “truth commission” or some recognized official proceeding, the most egregious American attitudes and behaviors associated with the Vietnam War were never properly addressed. The conviction that the U.S. has a right to violently shape the internal life of foreign nations, that our “national security” depends on military dominance, and that lying to the public is a necessary feature of governance, never disappeared. Left intact was a governmental apparatus oriented to war, and procedures which anesthetized officials to the human costs of their decisions. Under the rubric of “complexity,” the sacrifice of millions of Asians and tens of thousands of American soldiers, became clouded for subsequent generations. And while adjustments were made, the habit of military intervention remained — from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and elsewhere. We currently see its precipitate, from Democratic and Republican administrations, as the U.S. bombs Yemen, and enables Israel’s massacre of Palestinian children.
Morton H. Halperin is an American expert on foreign policy and civil liberties
The American military intervention in Vietnam and its failure was a bug and not a feature of U.S. foreign policy after WWII. In deciding whether to intervene in armed conflicts abroad in the period after World War II, the United States was guided by the Truman Doctrine which said that we would “support free peoples resisting subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressure.”
This was a commitment to support local efforts not to replace them or to intervene in all conflicts. The United States stayed out of the Chinese civil war and ceded Soviet control of Eastern Europe while supporting the Greek and Korean resistance to communist control.
The disastrous American intervention in Vietnam should have taught us that we should only consider intervention when we are supporting people struggling for their freedom. This principle is key to understanding why the American intervention in Afghanistan was such a disaster and why we must help defend Ukraine.
Steve Kinzer, Senior Fellow in International and Public Affairs, Brown University
America’s war in Vietnam was not an aberration. It reflected a key fact of American history: domestic politics shapes our foreign policy. The United States refused to accept the 1954 Geneva accord that would have settled the Vietnam question peacefully. President Eisenhower feared that doing so would, as his press secretary James Hagerty put it, “give the Democrats a chance to say that we sat idly by and let Indochina be sold down the river to the Communists.” A decade later, Lyndon Johnson concluded that Congress would never approve his Great Society programs if he pulled troops out of Vietnam: “They won’t be talking about my civil rights bill or education or beautification. No, sir. They’ll be pushing Vietnam up my ass every time.”
Washington helped create the Cold War narrative that Americans came to accept. That narrative wound up limiting presidents’ ability to make difficult foreign policy decisions.
Noah Kulwin, writer and co-host of “Blowback” podcast
The U.S. war on Vietnam could not have ended in any way other than failure. The collapse of our South Vietnamese client; the strategic pointlessness of our air campaign; the breakdown of order among infantry, airmen and sailors; the arms industry gravy train; the list of causes is endless. But the striking resemblance between how that war failed and how wars since have failed must be observed. In Iraq, but most of all in Afghanistan. That the U.S. has lost wars in the same way for a half-century suggests a pattern — not an aberration.
Robert Levering, Executive Producer of “The Movement and the ‘Madman’”
I was of draft age during the Vietnam war. So, U.S. foreign policy was an intensely personal matter for me. I gradually became clear that I could not fight in an unjust and immoral war and decided to resist the draft and become a fulltime antiwar organizer. At the time, I thought the Vietnam war was just a horrible mistake. The Iraq and Afghan wars and the constant American involvement in conflicts throughout the world since then have convinced me otherwise. I now see the Vietnam war as only a symptom of America's systemic commitment to global military domination since World War II.
By chance, I've spent the last two weeks in Vietnam. I've been seeing the real-world implications. Among other things, I've seen the site of the My Lai massacre and a rehab center for children of the fourth generation of Agent Orange victims.
Anatol Lieven, director of the Eurasia program at the Quincy Institute
Tragically, the failures of the U.S. in Vietnam were due to persistent features of U.S. policymaking culture that contributed heavily to the disasters in Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine, and will, if not addressed, recur in future. The first is a failure to seriously study other countries. This led for many years to a disastrous blindness to the power of Vietnamese nationalism. Instead, you have ideological stereotyping, leading to a division of the world into giant blocs of friends and enemies, from the “Communist Bloc” through the “Axis of Evil” to today’s supposed “Alliance of Autocrats.” Finally, there is the unlovely combination of humanitarian rhetoric with brutal indifference to the lives of the real people on the ground that are the objects of U.S. strategy. Vietnamese, Cambodians, Central Americans, Africans, Kurds, Afghans and Iraqis have all been used in this way. Today, it is the Ukrainians’ turn.
Daniel McCarthy, vice president for the Collegiate Network at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute
The Vietnam conflict was over as a war by the time I was born in the late 1970s, but during my lifetime the Vietnam era has never really ended. Neither the superficial success of the 1991 Persian Gulf War nor the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America’s own soil erased the Vietnam experience as the defining narrative of what it means for our country to go to war under modern conditions. All our wars are still Vietnams. Our Indochinese quagmire began with threat inflation — “domino theory” — and a refusal to acknowledge that we didn’t have enough support among the people we were trying to “save” to win a war against native opponents. Threat inflation, domino theories — the latest says that if Putin takes the Donbas, he’ll surely take Tallinn then Paris then London — and ignorance of local attitudes remain the hallmarks of U.S. interventionism today, as does the use of overwhelming firepower as a substitute for rather than a plausible means to victory. Vietnam syndrome has never been cured because our leaders persist in the same behaviors that brought it on half a century ago, and they reap the same results. With every war they renew the lessons of Vietnam.
Robert Merry, author of “Where they Stand: The American Presidents in the Eyes of Voters and Historians”
America’s Vietnam misadventure was not a policy aberration but a natural and probably inevitable product of the country’s Cold War mentality. By January 1949 the West had won the war’s first phase, the struggle for Europe. The continent was now fortified against a Russian invasion. But a new era quickly emerged, characterized by East Bloc efforts to probe and drive against the vulnerable colonial flanks and strategic assets of the West, in China, Southeast Asia, Korea, Egypt, and wherever Western weakness was discerned. America took the bait, but not because its leaders were fools. They were being consistent with the country’s perception of the protracted struggle they faced. In many ways, though, it was a mug’s game, forcing upon America multiple challenges at once, of Soviet choosing. But in a bipolar world on the edge of conflict, such challenges had to be confronted. That leaves execution as the big question.
Paul Pillar, non-resident fellow of the Quincy Institute and non-resident senior fellow at the Center for Security Studies of Georgetown University
The military tragedy in Vietnam grew directly out of attitudes central to the Cold War, the dominant framework of U.S. foreign policy in the half century following World War II. The Viet Minh/Viet Cong campaign was seen not for what it really was — the continuation of a nationalist, anti-colonial struggle — but instead as part of a worldwide communist advance led by Moscow and Beijing. That perception led to the erroneous assumptions underlying the U.S. military intervention, including that a communist victory would cause other countries to fall like dominoes and that a U.S. failure to show resolve in Vietnam would lead to other setbacks elsewhere in the world. The mistakes cannot be blamed on excessive optimism, since even those policymakers who held gloomy views about the intervention thought the U.S. had to make the effort. Nor can they be blamed on any shortcuts in the policymaking process.
Tim Shorrock, Washington-based journalist
The "failure of Vietnam," or what I would call the "liberation of Vietnam," was most definitely a feature of U.S. foreign policy that grew out of the aggressive Cold War tactics carried out by the Truman and Eisenhower administrations soon after World War II. This was especially true in Asia. To defeat anti-colonial, independence movements and ensure pro-American, anticommunist regimes, U.S. leaders allied themselves with a motley crew of fascists and collaborators with Japanese colonialism, starting with the far-right in Southern Korea and then Japan itself. That created the conditions for the Korean War against North Korea and Revolutionary China, which inspired Truman to block the Taiwan straits, send the first U.S. military aid to the French in Vietnam, and unleash the CIA as the cops of the world. Vietnam did not want to be part of a French or American empire. We were on the wrong side; they won.
Monica Duffy Toft, non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute and Professor of International Politics at Tufts University
The failure in Vietnam was a feature — not a bug. American leaders have repeatedly failed to internalize history. In Vietnam — again in Afghanistan — they underestimated the power of nationalism and the resilience of guerrilla warfare. Since the rise of modern nationalism, strong states have increasingly struggled to defeat weaker opponents fighting for their homeland. These adversaries are often defending existential interests, while the United States tends to fight in peripheral theaters with few vital interests at stake. In Afghanistan, the U.S. achieved its core military objectives by December 2001 — destroying al-Qaida’s sanctuary and removing the Taliban from power. Yet rather than recognize success, the mission creeped into nation-building, committing the U.S. to 20 years of costly engagement. Vietnam and Afghanistan thus reflect a persistent flaw in U.S. strategy: conflating military victory with political transformation and the mistaken belief that foreign societies can be remade through prolonged and externally driven intervention.
Stephen Walt, board member at the Quincy Institute, Robert and Professor of International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School
Vietnam exemplifies most of the pathologies that have undermined U.S. foreign policy for decades. It was justified by threat-inflation and dubious ideas like the domino theory. U.S. policymakers were trying to use massive amounts of military force to remake a society whose history, culture, and national sentiments that they did not understand. They relied on corrupt and incompetent local clients, concealed basic truths about the war from the American people, and refused to raise taxes to pay for the war. The leaders who mismanaged this debacle were never held accountable and remained leading players in the establishment for the rest of their lives. Finally, the country learned little from this bitter experience, and repeated these same errors in Iraq, Afghanistan, and several other places.”
Cora Weiss, peace activist, organizer of the November 15, 1969 anti-war march on the National Mall
The U.S. government took on the mantle of political and military interventions after World War II. The decade long Vietnam War was one of many — not an aberration.
To diminish the likelihood and horrors of U.S. interventions, civil society must know and utilize its power. During the Vietnam War, in addition to marches to end the war, civil society provided some measure of direct relief to POWs. The anti-war movement sent me and two other women to work with the Vietnam Women’s Union to establish a channel for mail and packages to POWs. This resulted in an accurate list of prisoners, confirmed their treatment, and eventually allowed us to bring three prisoners home.
To constrain and eventually overturn America’s impulse to rule the world by force, we must put peace education into our curriculum, teach diplomacy, and embrace UNSC Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security.
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