Should We Dream of Peace?

Or actually make it happen?

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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At the NATO conference in Ankara this week, it was announced that European countries would collaborate on building an entirely new, highly accurate, long-distance missile system for $50billion. Britain, meantime, has announced that it must reduce social security and NHS payments in order to pay for a new fighter jet, four new nuclear missile submarines and the AUKUS attack nuclear submarines. The first of these are due for delivery in about 8 years although design work hasn’t even started. Germany will boost its military budget massively and the US (i.e. Trump) has threatened a trade embargo against Spain as it has announced it will not be increasing its military budget. That’s in between him suddenly firing 81 accusations of “communism” against people he doesn’t like, such as the Democratic Socialists (DSA), of which Mamdami is a member (see Robert Reich’s rejoinder). That says Trump is losing his grip.

All this is despite the very obvious failure of conventional warfare in the Persian Gulf this past few months, but they say that generals are always ready to fight the last war. So what’s going on? Actually, it’s nothing new, just another attempt to rerun the Crimean War against everybody’s favourite monster, Mother Russia. At 17million sqkm, Russia is far and away the largest country in the world and immeasurably wealthy in natural resources, as well as having major advantages in its huge coastline (37,600km) and borders. For people who like conquest and colonisation, Russia is and always has been the prize of all prizes. Trouble is, the Russians don’t particularly like conquest and colonisation directed against them and refuse to cooperate in the Great Game.

Their history is long and fascinating but the overwhelming theme is one of endless destruction. As long as there have been records, invading armies from east and west have swept across the limitless steppes, back and forth, just because there was nothing to stop them. For hundreds of years, Russia has steadily expanded its territory, down to the Caucasus and especially east, across Siberia to the Pacific Ocean. The hostility of Western Europeans to their eastern Slavic brethren goes back forever but took its modern form when Napoleon was chased out of Russia, allowing the Czar’s armies direct entry to Europe and to the settlement conferences. For the West, the problem was clear: they wanted to dominate the world themselves, and were well on the way to doing it, but then this gigantic empire of oafs suddenly thrust themselves into the party and threatened to spoil it for the countries that thought they had the right to dispose the world. Panic, which spilled into war in Crimea and various other places in 1853-56. This was the first true modern war, fought under appalling conditions, and Russia’s defeat forced it to modernise, e.g. emancipation of serfs (aka slaves) in 1861, modernisation of education, the military and so on.

In the first half of the 20^th Century, Russia and USSR were attacked or invaded six times. During the Great War, about 3.5million Russians died but nobody really knows the number. In the Civil War after the Revolution, from 7-12million citizens died; in Stalin’s Terror and the Holodomor, another 20million; during the Nazi invasion, at least 25million more. The country suffered unbelievably during each of these disasters. In 1945, the Soviet leadership swore: Never again. Nobody ever will threaten us again. This was a bit of a problem as Marxist theory said that as long as there are capitalists, they will try to destroy socialism. The US promptly obliged by surrounding the USSR and later China with some 850 foreign military bases, all aimed at the Eurasian heartland. Accordingly, the Soviet leadership pushed to develop nuclear weapons as a defensive measure and felt it had to match the West bomb for bomb. In the West, this was broadcast as “Soviet aggression”: “Look at those dreadful commies, they want to destroy us, quick, they’ve opened a missile gap, we have to beat them.” Truman thought that the US would be able to keep the peace with 200 nuclear bombs. At its peak, it had about 15,000 and still has about 7,000, of which 1,700 are actively deployed (China has 640, with 34 deployed).

We know why Russians fear and mistrust the West, there are tens of millions of skulls buried in the rich dark earth as proof. Trump’s perfidy is simply the icing on a bitter cake. They believe that the West helped the Nazis to gain power, helped them stay in power and did heaps to encourage them to invade the USSR. Trouble is, they’re right. There is a book called Conjuring Hitler, by Guido Preparata (2005, available online), which argues that the British MI6 and other spy agencies chose Hitler as their man in the early 1920s when he was still in Munich and fostered his career thereafter. I think that wildly overstates the case but it is beyond question that, given the instability in Germany from 1919 to about 1936 or 37, every politician in the West saw the choice as “anybody but the Bolsheviks.” They were delighted when the Nazis took power and immediately began throwing communists and socialists into the new KonzentrationLager. They knew Hitler’s hold on power was very weak but they also knew that if they made any sort of move against him, he would be toppled and the Reds would take over. And that was the nightmare in their nightmares: a Bolshevik alliance stretching from the Ardennes to Bering Strait. True, Churchill warned against Hitler but it was only because he threatened the British Empire, not because of all the Slavs he had earlier announced he wanted to kill (Mein Kampf, Chap 15).

Accounts in the West of World War II more or less ignore the fact that the European war was essentially a land war in the East. All the rest was a sideshow. 85% of German casualties were on the Eastern Front, 90% of their tanks left the factories and headed east, and so on, but we never hear this. It’s all a mixture of plucky Britain and Hogan’s heroes (which I’ve never seen) interspersed with the Final Solution, quite forgetting that Germany’s goal in the USSR was 30million Slavs exterminated in the first year of the invasion. They tried, but didn’t quite make it. From the time of the invasion in June 1941 to the end of that year, 3.25million Soviet troops were captured. 97% of them were dead by the end of December, 20,000 a day, the greatest single slaughter of humans in our ghastly history. I could say “All this is ignored” but it’s not ignored, it’s actually carefully suppressed. We are told the Nazi war was a war to exterminate Jews in Europe but it wasn’t, it was a war to colonise the USSR in the same way Britain had colonised India and North America, France in North and West Africa or Belgium in the Congo. Do our esteemed leaders in the West tell little fibs? Most emphatically they do. The recent American War on Everybody, Chapter 386 (Persian Gulf rerun) was on the basis the Iranian government was hanging on by its fingernails and just needed a push to fall over. Lies, lies, lies, from beginning to end. See this report from Patrick Henningsen who is currently in Iran for the Ayatollah’s funeral.

At present in Europe, there are two themes trending. The first is terrified shrieks echoing through the media: “The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming, get more guns.” The second is: “Russia is on the verge of collapse, they’re incompetent barbarians and we just need to push a bit and they’ll fall over.” Unstated: “... and then we can loot them to our heart’s content.”

If indeed the Russians have any military designs on Western Europe, which I seriously doubt, there are a couple of points to remember. First, all things being equal, at their present rate of advance in Ukraine, fighting a much smaller and less industrialised country, it would take them about 2,600 years to reach the Portuguese coast. Fighting a combined population and industrial production many times larger than their own, on a front about twenty times larger, we could expect to see the Tovariches jump into the surf at Nazare in about 28,700 years.

Second, all things aren’t equal. As Iran and Hezbollah have shown, the days of conventional war, where more tanks and bombers and troops means more victories, are well and truly over. In a few months, Hezbollah has destroyed over 400 Israeli Merkava tanks, costing about $5million each, using $300 home-made drones. Iran took out two high end American radar systems costing $1billion each with a couple of indigenous cruise missiles costing about $100,000 each. Once they were blinded, the Iranians launched hundreds of Shahed drones at its attackers, costing about $20,000 each, forcing their opponents to fire Patriot missile defences at $4million a pop. Iran shot down about 34 American drones, costing $30million each although the most expensive, Triton drones, cost up to $200million each. Their cheap drones destroyed air fuelling tankers costing $200million each and forced the $8billion aircraft carriers to rush to safety. The USS Gerald Ford (which cost $13billion to build and $7million a day to run) suffered major damage from a fire starting in a laundry and will be out of action for a year at a cost of a mere $25million (I don’t believe that figure, that’s a rounding error in the Pentagon).

Is there a message in this? I think so but I also think our politicians and generals are incapable of seeing it. First message: we can no longer afford militarism. We can’t afford the $19trillion (with a T) that military activity costs each year, in direct costs to build the weapons, pay for the fuel, pay the troops and so on, plus the destruction of civilian infrastructure, plus the myriad deaths and injuries and pensions and so on, plus the “opportunity cost.” That is, if we spend $1 on a bullet, that’s $1 we didn’t spend on some tomato plants to grow food. If we put one young person in uniform, that’s one industrial or nursing or farming or building or mothering job unfilled, so no production. If we buy one nuclear submarine, that’s about 800,000 public housing units we don’t build and so the ranks of the homeless swell steadily, meaning more people to look after them or put them in prison or mental hospitals. Crucial point: militarism consumes the country exponentially. If you double the size of the military, it consumes not twice as much but four times as much through the opportunity cost.

Second, and despite the overlooked fact that aggressive war is a crime against humanity, the advantage has always been with the defenders, except now that’s magnified a hundred fold. In a few hours, kids can build a drone to destroy a tank and its four crew. Iran’s marine drones, both surface and subsurface, are a match for any $2billion destroyer in the Western navies, and its home-grown missiles will deal with the really big ships. Britain was very wise not to send its navy to “assist” in the Persian Gulf. While the Iranians may have hesitated over sinking an American ship, they would have fought each other for the chance to sink HMS Dogspoop. And Trump wouldn’t have lifted a finger.

Third, we can no longer afford to pretend that Russia is a danger but global warming isn’t. So far, the war in the Persian Gulf has dumped something like 350million tonnes of CO₂ in the atmosphere. The devastation in Gaza and South Lebanon would easily double that. Every jet taking off, every missile fired, every bomb dropped or rifle fired injects poison into the air. Every military jet produced, every tank, every pair of military boots, every meal delivered to a soldier in the field, every operation to remove shrapnel, every element of this industry of death is quietly pouring deadly gases and chemicals into the biosphere and, above all, diverting attention from the looming disaster from climate change. Europe and the US have had several weeks of heat wave and they don’t like it. Good. I hope it hurts because until it really hurts, all the Trumps and Netanyuhas and Kushners and Epsteins who have the world’s steering wheel in a death grip won’t take their eyes off their bank balances to do something about it. Better still, we should throw all of them in the dumpster and lock the lid.

Final message: Who wants war? When Hitler marched to occupy Czechoslovakia, he expected ecstatic crowds to line the streets but they stayed home and wept. The troops marched through dark and silent roads as the population did not want war, even though they got it later. EU president Ursula von der Leyen and various other pollies are running around telling everybody they have to get ready for war with Russia within five years but it’s an uphill battle for the poor dears. Most Germans do not see Russia as a threat (23% although 35% see the US as the major threat to world peace). How many citizens actually think war is a good idea? None. If so, how are they convinced to pay for the military and send their sons to be killed? Simple: they are told over and over again that the bad people over there, the sinister Other, are evil subhumans who are secretly plotting to attack in the middle of the night, so we goodies need to arm ourselves to the teeth and conduct lots of military exercises which consist of sending heavily armed fighters straight at the enemy’s borders then pulling them back at the last second. The West does this all the time then wonders why the other side gets angry.

Even though the overwhelming majority of people want to live in peace, this ploy works because the fear of subjugation is so strong in humans that they can be led to do stupid things by clever operators manipulating their emotions from behind the scenes. And it has to stop. But it won’t stop until the common people rise up and take power from the 1% of unmitigated scoundrels who are running the show to suit themselves. The won’t give up power easily.

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Further evidence of the deliberate targeting of children in Gaza.

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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. Amazon (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 Amazon.

Clinical application of the biocognitive model:

McLaren N (2018). Anxiety: The Inside Story. Ann Arbor, MI: Future Psychiatry Press. At Amazon.

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 Amazon.

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