Justifying Perpetual War

There’s only one reason.

These posts explore the themes developed in my monograph, Narcisso-Fascism, which is itself a real-world test of the central concepts of the Biocognitive Model of Mind for psychiatry.

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Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Orwell, 1984

A week ago, the US Secretary of State, Mr Marco Rubio was in Greece on official business and gave a speech with the Parthenon as the background. He started by saying that Greece was the birthplace of everything worthy in western civilisation:

Here, in Athens, we found the first full realization of all the essential traits that would come to define the West: fierce individuality and relentless ambition; daring exploration and invention; a yearning for discovery, for adventure, risk and glory. An insatiable curiosity about the world and the principles by which it operates, a hunger to know the mysteries of nature and grasp the secrets of the cosmos. An impatience with the notion of impossibility, chafing at all boundaries and limits, straining to peer into the depths of the unknown.

All this and more was absorbed by the founders of the US and guides its policies today. However, he said, the collective West has allowed itself to become fat and lazy. It has ignored its history, turned nationalism into a dirty word, exported its industries, let its schools degenerate into centres of “woke” indoctrination, felt guilty over its amazing achievements, as though they didn’t deserve their greatness and, quel horreur, “… with every passing year, we seemed to outsource more of our sovereignty, transferring our decisions to global bureaucracies …” The West in general and Europe in particular has gone to sleep but is starting to awaken from its slumber:

Across this continent, we are witnessing what we hope will be the beginnings of a generational shift: skyrocketing defense spending ... War did not disappear simply because we preferred peace. Other states continued to arm, to seek influence, to compete for territory, and technology, and resources, and markets, and energy, and power. And now, there is war again. There is new competition between great powers again. There is vulnerability, aggression, terrorism, a whole universe of new threats and attacks again.

His speech was grandiose, aggressive, grossly narcissistic, and endlessly dishonest in its distortions of history and current affairs. In other words, puerile. The US wants peace but war has been forced on it by ghastly fanatics like the death cult of the mullahs in Iran. The western hemisphere was an empty wilderness waiting to be tamed by noble adventurers from Europe blah blah. Apparently, many in the audience were embarrassed by this phillipic and it has been widely criticised, e.g. by Matthias Risse of the Centre for Human Rights at Harvard, and by geopolitical analyst Ben Norton, who emphasised Rubio’s main point: “We choose the unapologetic pursuit of national power.” Peace, obviously, means not struggling against the American jackboot pressing on your throat.

Rubio’s speechwriter took his inspiration from Pericletian Greece 2,500 years ago but overlooked more important recent developments, e.g. the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and so on. The preamble to the UN Charter states inter alia “... armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest.” Article 1 (2) states that people have the right of self-determination, specifically set out in UN GA Resolution 1514 (XV) of Dec. 14^th 1960, which says:

1. The subjection of peoples to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation constitutes a denial of fundamental human rights, is contrary to the Charter of the United Nations and is an impediment to the promotion of world peace and co-operation.

2. All peoples have the right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.

Gaza, anybody?

All this is very noble so what went wrong? Rubio gave the clue with his statement: “We choose the unapologetic pursuit of national power.” Essentially, we have the guns and the money so we’ll do what we like and the rest of you can suck it up. We see this doctrine set out clearly in two semi-official documents. The first, from 2019, comes from the Rand Corporation in California, a fabulously wealthy “think tank” (2024 income US$514million) that has been at the centre of US foreign and other policies for decades (Rand stands for ‘research and development,’ nothing to do with that evil woman). The report, Extending Russia : Competing from Advantageous Ground, is a chunky 354 pages but I won’t bore you with all the details, there is an 11 page summary which extracts the important bits:

Russia is a country in stagnation... Economic sanctions have further contributed to this decline. Russia also suffers from deep-seated anxieties about the possibility of Western-inspired regime change, loss of great-power status, and even military attack (p11) … We examine a range of nonviolent measures that could exploit Russia’s actual vulnerabilities and anxieties as a way of stressing Russia’s military and economy and the regime’s political standing at home and abroad. The steps we examine would not have either defense or deterrence as their prime purpose, ... Rather, these steps are conceived of as elements in a campaign designed to unbalance the adversary, ... causing Russia to overextend itself militarily or economically or causing the regime to lose domestic and/or international prestige and influence (p12).

It goes on: Russia conducts disinformation warfare against the West but the US has information campaigns that “helped to undermine key aspects of the (Russian government’s) claim to legitimacy.” “The Russian leadership also harbors fears (probably exaggerated) of a U.S. capacity to undermine the Russian system.” Those anxieties could be fanned by sending US nuclear submarines to patrol just off the Russian naval bases and by sending bombers close to Russian airspace. The goal is to provoke them into spending too much on their military, leading to civil unrest and, ideally, collapse of the government. Another ploy would be to provoke “regime change” in Belarus by a “colour revolution” although, unlike Russia, it says, the US does not interfere in other countries’ internal affairs. Unfortunately, “The principal limiting factor in most of these maritime strategies is that Russia could simply choose not to compete” (p18). “Russia is not seeking parity with the United States across the military spectrum, and further U.S. advances in fields of existing superiority might occasion little Russian response. For instance, Russia is not going to challenge U.S. dominance of the world’s oceans” (p21). Damned Russians, what’s wrong with them? What can we do to scare them into bankrupting themselves as we did to the USSR?

This document was not adopted as policy by the then Trump I regime but these principles have guided US policy since 1945. The point is not that the USSR/Russia actually threatens US national interests because if they have to be provoked into action, then clearly they don’t. No, it is that those bloody Tovariches have got their hands on 17.6million sqkm of very, very wealthy dirt, guarded by nearly as many nuclear weapons as the US, and they’re in no hurry to let American corporations plunder, sorry, develop it as they’ve done in Latin America. In fact, they actually want to develop it themselves and (cue meltdown) keep the profits!!!! How unAmerican can they be?

The only question their plan on undermining and destabilising Russia doesn’t answer consists of one word: “Why?” Why is it necessary to breach every possible international covenant by pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war? They don’t seem to have considered that but we actually know the answer.

Similarly, a document issued by the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University outlines how the author, a retired major general and former director of IDF Intelligence, thinks the country should proceed. It hasn’t done enough to secure itself, he suggests, and the attack on October 7^th is proof. He sets out a number of points that have obviously been tossed around at great length and have very strong support from major figures in the government and society:

1. Primacy of Jewish Identity over Democracy: The state’s Jewish identity takes precedence over its democratic system of government.

2. Peace as a Means Rather Than an End: The underlying assumption is that any arrangement with Arab actors is temporary and deceptive. Peace is a naive left wing concept opposed to the rational, right wing concept of security.

3. Rejection of the Independent Existence of Arab States: ... most Arab states are not genuine nation-states, but collections of tribes and ethnic groups ... undermining their stability is viewed as a natural process, one that Israel can manage ... (and) should even encourage.

4. War as a Foundational State: War is essential to national security and cannot be replaced by a state of peace...

5. Self-Reliance and Severing Dependence on the United States ... The US is a “declining power” whose progressive values are not compatible with Jewish national identity.

6. Absolute Priority for Initiative and Offense over Defense: Preemptive, surprise strikes are viewed as the only way to achieve victory...

7. Forward Defense: ... establishing forward defense zones wherever possible becomes crucial. These ... destabilize their host states and weaken them relative to Israel. These spaces enable Israel to move the war into enemy territory as quickly as possible.

8. Internalizing the Reality of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict as a Permanent Israeli-Arab Conflict:... the existence of a Palestinian national movement is an inauthentic Western narrative rooted in post-colonial guilt ... yet another Arab attempt to fight and destroy the State of Israel.

9. Settlement and Civilians as a Central Component of Security: Defence by civilians organized in ... underground militias ... (and allows) preemptive attack ... and further contributes to the destabilization of the “synthetic” Arab states.

10. Establishment of self-sufficient military industries and research.

He points out that this is consistent with current Israeli policy but has never been fully articulated and discussed. He believes that peace with Israel’s neighbours is incompatible with the idea of a land promised to the chosen people, and therefore impossible to gain, and sees the ideal as a state of permanent warfare in which every citizen is involved. He raises a number of practical questions that flow from this view of Israel’s place in West Asia and in the larger world, but is quite sure they can be overcome without risk to the survival of the Jewish state.

The Dissident, a very capable commentator said: “Leading Israeli Think Tank Publishes Psychotic Israeli ‘National Security’ Doctrine.” In fact, it’s not psychotic at all. It is a clear-sighted plan to commit major international crimes for as long as it takes to get whatever territory Israel wants by removing all inhabitants who are likely to object and by neutralising their misguided supporters, because God’s plan is that Israel will be a “light unto the nations” and anybody who opposes this is satanic by definition and has to be destroyed. That is not psychosis. That is evil incarnate. The author, one Tamir Hayman, is not mentally ill or disordered in any way. He simply believes an evil doctrine just because he wants to. He has done very well out of believing and enforcing it and wants other people to join the party and continue the mayhem.

Rubio complained that “War did not disappear simply because we preferred peace. Other states continued to arm, to seek influence, to compete for territory, and technology, and resources, and markets, and energy, and power. And now, there is war again.” War for territory or resources or for anything is specifically prohibited by Article 1 of the UN Charter, which both the US and Israel have signed. There are only two countries in the world which are currently fighting aggressive wars for territory and/or resources, the US and Israel. Russia’s attack on Ukraine was to prevent it joining NATO, part of the clearly stated American plan to scare them by putting nuclear weapons on their border. For the Kremlin, that was an intolerable risk and it worked, they were very scared.

The other two are simply doing what dogs in the street do, fighting to get themselves higher up the dominance hierarchy, just because it feels so good to stand over other people and gloat. That is the answer to the question “Why?” behind all this aggression. The US in Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Panama and Greenland, previously Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Korea and all the rest, and Israel in half a dozen countries, are textbook examples of the blind, biologically-driven human urge to dominate other humans, to get bigger and more powerful because testosterone. Not because of realistic fears of the other side or human rights or democracy or self-determination or God’s love, just power.

The object of power is power.

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My critical works are best approached in this order:

The case against mainstream psychiatry:

McLaren N (2024). Theories in Psychiatry: building a post-positivist psychiatry. Ann Arbor, MI: Future Psychiatry Press. https://bookshop.org/ (this also covers a range of modern philosophers, showing that their work cannot be extended to account for mental disorder).

Development and justification of the biocognitive model:

McLaren N (2021): Natural Dualism and Mental Disorder: The biocognitive model for psychiatry. London, Routledge. At https://bookshop.org/

Clinical application of the biocognitive model:

McLaren N (2018). Anxiety: The Inside Story. Ann Arbor, MI: Future Psychiatry Press. At https://bookshop.org/

Testing the biocognitive model in an unrelated field:

McLaren N (2023): Narcisso-Fascism: The psychopathology of right wing extremism. Ann Arbor, MI: Future Psychiatry Press. At https://bookshop.org/

The whole of this work is copyright but may be copied or retransmitted provided the author is acknowledged.