The Madness of “Preemptive War” - East and West
“Preemptive war” is absurd as a concept and horrific in practice when the US does it — as in Iraq, Afghanistan, the whole posture of the “War on Terror,” Cold War catastrophes like Viet Nam and Drug War debacles, like the 1989 Panama invasion. And preemptive war is an absurd nightmare as it is being proffered and now carried out by the Russian president. The idea that Ukraine poses an existential threat to Russia and had to be invaded by land, sea and air, delivered into the grinding hell of war, endure attempted regime change— shattering generations of families, pulverizing cities and scattering refugees across the globe during a global pandemic — because the nation might one day, but likely not, join NATO or because there are Nazis in Ukraine or because they have arms from the West or because the Russian president declares it’s “not really a country” is a line of “reasoning”all too familiar to me. All my life, I’ve heard this type of war-justifying rhetoric from my own US government and media — “Not one domino must fall!” “WMD!” “They want to destroy our civilization!” “We'll bring them democracy!” These pleas all amount to the nonsensical claim of: “They made me do an invasion.”
Contrary to what preening pundits like Caitlin Johnstone may declare, it is possible to recognize the likely mistake of growing NATO post-1990 and still condemn unambiguously the invasion of Ukraine by an anti-LGBTQ, free speech-squelching billionaire autocrat who is a hero to the global far right. We in the US have no excuse for being so credulous as to believe the pretexts offered by the Russian president because this kind of rhetoric has been blasted at us from by an expansionist government since the nation was founded. And in the 21st century, outlets like Fox News and MSNBC have relentlessly promoted a revolving cast of War on Terror enemies who “must be eliminated at all costs” even when that means the US “has to be” the aggressor and civilians "find themselves in harm’s way.”
Finally, there is no excuse for US Americans believing that these type of operations are efficient, lickety-split affairs. From experience, we know that they are not. Indeed, they become forever wars. They bankrupt and destroy nations. Military veterans cope with moral injury and PTSD from the acts they commit and the horrors they witness. An average of twenty-two veterans commit suicide daily in the US.
Rhetoric of "preemptive war," whether it's coming from DC or Moscow, must be seen for the terror-justifying sophistry that it is. To quote the artist and writer Kenn Orphan, “Opposing Russian militarism and imperialism is as important as opposing American militarism and imperialism, as well as NATO aggression… the imperative now is to join in solidarity with our antiwar allies in Russia.”
