Murder Machines

Be hard on yourself
You've been spoilt for years
Be hard on yourself
You'll be glad you did 

                - Marillion - Be Hard on Yourself

 

While I’ve been attempting to comprehend the pandemic era's place within contemporary history, as well as preparing to absorb Marillion’s proclamation that we only have an hour until it’s dark, the Real has once again further intensified as another intrusion as the 2020s progress. Of course, this is from the perspective of a very complacent time period in history. With the exception of 9/11 and the following economic turbulence, the era since at least 1984 has been considerably uneventful, particularly 1991- 2001. We got too used to it. As one meme recently expressed, we don’t want all of the twentieth century coming back in the 2020s. But, now we have it, the largest wart in 70 years, in geo-political terms. As I noted before, following the devolution of 2016, some will suffer. We weren’t prepared for it to be in such an advanced nation, entering into the first world, and inextricably linked to the second. One day life was perfectly normal, and the next morning it was definitely not. I have also noted George Friedman’s prediction that we would go to war with Russia in the 2020s. [1] This seemed to be far too much of a stretch. But, here we are.

For those that mindlessly place the blame on the current administration, I defer to Marie Yovanovitch, Fiona Hill, and John Bolton. [2] Not only because it has been their job to understand this context, but they were actively involved in the implementation of policies of the previous administration. An administration that explicitly promoted the idea of the US exiting NATO, which would result in its dissolution allowing for unchecked Russian expansion. Furthermore, plenty of blame can be located in the Libertarian rhetoric of questioning the existence of NATO for the last decade. Without its continued deterrence, this situation would have developed much sooner, and at the cost of the sovereignty of many countries. The purposes of the Western alliance has now been revealed and proven, and any further attempts at its deterioration can be seen for the political propaganda it is. [3]

It could be argued, and is now becoming quite apparent, that we wasted thirty years ignoring improvements to Russia-Western relations. I contended in the 90s that there should be improved agreements between Russia and the US to diminish the risks of confrontation. However, after 1999, maybe even 1998, I’m not sure this would have really been possible. There was only a small window. And the subsequent republican administrations dismantled arms agreements rather than enhancing them.

That said, the idea that the West is to blame is nonsense. There was no agreement to not expand NATO, and although it is undesirable for Russia, particularly leadership that wants to reform the Soviet Union, that is the playing field that we have legitimately inherited. The idea that the US and the USSR disengaged from the Cold War on equal terms is pure fantasy. Wars have consequences. The reality is that the USSR lost. Their untenable political-ecomonic system failed and they were the ones that were forced to change (and replace that system with another corrupt, untenable system). The result was a victory for the US, providing the advantage. Disregarding the desires of American influence, the issue of NATO membership is openly free to the existing nations (unlike the Warsaw pact). It is those countries that are freely expressing interest in membership. And now, under direct threat of nuclear attack, we can see the pressing need for these countries to participate, as well as the continued mission of NATO.

Further nonsense is the ubiquitous comparison to the American invasion of Iraq. While the invasion was a massive strategic blunder, undermining not only the whole of US history, but that of the Western Liberalism as well.

However: this event emerged from a specific context. First, the US was actually attacked, prompting a response. Although it was the wrong country to prosecute such a response, Iraq was not altogether removed from the situation. The region was already involved in a complex multitude of conflicts which were intertwined with Islamic terrorism. Iraq was ruled by a dangerous dictator, had invaded other countries, was committing its own war crimes, and had been in violation of international law. Repeated violations, and concerns of its weapons program were a concern for the international community. The US response not only had support of its close allies, but NATO and UN support as well. Even Russia hesitantly agreed that the weapons inspections were not working. There was not a great international resistance. Saddam did not have the support of the people, and had intervention been done in a less destructive way, could have been better supported by the populace. While there were war crimes committed as part of the campaign, the operation itself was not a war crime. US policy did not target civilians, flatten civilian infrastructure, or siege cities. Grave mistakes certainly happened, and should have been fully prosecuted, but were not an intentional element of strategy.

I think the most damning condemnation of it is to judge it by the standards of the legacy of the Untied States, which supposedly attempts to uphold rigorous enlightened standards and democratic principles. In the overall field of history, it is less suspect to scrutiny, and this is why it was such a disappointment and should have been avoided

As nuclear powers, now toe-to-toe on the red line, it seems time is the dimension that will determine the fight. Before Russia can gain an advantage, and block international aid, US intervention must be able to prolong the resistance to ultimately weaken the Russian force. All we can do is:

1. Provide as many weapons as fast as possible.
2. Find ways to provide humanitarian assistance and prevent war crimes.
3.Wait out a Russian defeat (of itself).
4. Re-think military alliances, both in terms of internal NATO requirements, and NATO’s relationship with intermediate countries.
5.Affect regime change in Russia
6.Assertively pursue new arms limitation agreements, to reduce the dangers of escalation in future stand-offs. 

Perhaps the most startling revelation of this confrontation, is the test of the Russian military.  We know know that the most feared military for 70 years is impotent in combat against a peer nation, let-alone one that outspends, and out-trains it, by many, many factors.  Given US combat experience, there is no match.  But, more worrisome, is the fact that Russia now knows we know.  This means they have no conventional threat. And, they have no economic threat.  We have already beaten them is these two arenas That leaves only the strategic threat of WMDs. We are now in uncharted territory.

[1] who also noted that there would be a significant labor shortage and the US would have to import workers. I think its time for a re-read.

[2] Bolton, the most right-wing war-hawk in the Trump administration not only reveals that Biden is not "weak," but, predictably, claims that Trump couldn’t even find Ukraine on the map - which is quite telling.

[3] At this point, I’m firmly convinced that the Libertarian “party” is only a propaganda arm of Russian authoritarianism. Look at how fast they started posting memes of Russia as a utopia once, it;s cut off from the West. Ethnically singular, legally protected from the “fake news” of non-State media, excepted from the social programs of public health (vaccines), etc. Clearly it is the Russian Oligarchs that are the idolized position of the Libertarians, free to exploit all others for their own gain, as they clearly only support libertarian freedom for “me,” separate from the authoritarianism needed for all needed for all the dirty masses who must kept in ideological line. Never again can they be trusted.

 

Note: The above graphic is not meant to suggest that B-52s, or the USAF, are a murder machine (currently), although, of course, they potentially can be.  We have now reverted to a pre-post-Cold War stance, in which the defenses and deterrents that combat those current murder machines have the potential, through escalation, to cross the line into strategic mass destruction. Waking up to see potentially nuclear-armed B-52s headed towards the border of a nuclear aggressive country, certainly, marked the point of departure between these eras of relative global stability and possible catastrophic confrontation.

Postmodern Picard

With what sounded like a miracle, it was announced that we would finally be able to continue exploring the world of the 24th Century with the return of Jean Luc Picard.  The release of Picard itself, however, has driven a fissure through the world of Trek fans.  Both in terms of its structure and its 24th century content, it is far removed from the last time we viewed the Next Generation Era.   Trek has always reflected the real-world conditions of its time.  1960s Star Trek dealt with themes of gender and races analogous to the cultural transformations of that decade, along with directly mimicking its styles.  The situations of The Next Generation, along with the concurrent TOS films, reflected a world anchored in the outlook of 1990, environmentalism, gender orientation, economic disparity, all at the approaching end of the millennium when it seemed that society might finally make progress into a more stabilized form. Within this evolution, the end of the Cold War was perhaps a decisive element.  The stand-off between the Super-powers of the galaxy  that drove the politics of TOS was now in a dynamic shift.  The sudden crumbling of the Klingon Empire reflected the end of the Soviet Union, and while Picard existed in a post-Klingon universe, Kirk had to directly, personally deal with the transformation.  Now that we have returned to the Federation, 20+ years after Next Generation, these underlying dynamics have shifted the stable foundations of the world.  Many Trek fans are disturbed by the less-than-optimistic view that is at odds with the established Roddenberry universe.  It must be remembered that as Trek has reflected points in the later 20th Century, the newest 21st Century continuation must also reflect where we are at.  Much has change (not for the better) since we last saw Picard aboard the Enterprise.  We have had to endure the aftermath of 9/11 (which undermined the post-Cold war optimism we briefly encountered), followed by economic collapse and the disintegration of political stability.  The criticism that the Federation at the dawn of the 25th century does not hold the same ideals as the Federation we have known is missing the point.  Political entities do not remain static, and all such entities will undergo periods of crisis and de-evolution.  Returning to a Federation with a 1990 viewpoint would not posses the depth that we would ultimately expect from the world of Trek.  Along with the Klingons, the Cardassians, Romulans, and, ostensibly, the Borg has left the Federation as the sole super-power of the quadrant.  Without political challengers, and no one to answer to, the Federation is adrift in its own power.  Where one could rationally suppose a unified utopia could be finally achieved, as history has shown, entities define themselves in terms of the other.  Without peer-adversaries, one has to look for scapegoats to account for inadequacies.  The idea of a corrupt Starfleet is not a new idea at all.  Several Next Generation and Deep Space Nine stories were concerned with such a contingency (And were able to simply overcome the problem within one or two episodes, never to be concerning again).  Furthermore, the notion of a lees-than-equal class of non Starfleet citizens was always a nagging concealment.  There has been a long standing argument that the Federation is a Starfleet- controlled military dictatorship, with civilian life a more austere existence than the Socialist utopia it purports to be.

What Picard displays is the non-Starfleet life that is flourishing in a less restrictive environment.  It is a world with experience life on the surface, rather than anchored to a stable foundation of principle and goal.  Places like Freecloud are emerging, embracing the expansion of personal freedom, all entwined within economic relations.  The connected world of the Federation, presumably much more able than our own internet-connected world, had been previously shown to be a no-nonsense, utilitarian transfer of information.  Now, the fringes of commercial society can release their own vision.   Rather than simple browser pop-ups, orbiting such commercially free planets enables frivolous full 3D holographic pop-ups.  The everyday tech of the Federation has taken extraordinary leaps in 30 years (like our own).  The new instant walk-through street transporters are stunning compared to the limitations negotiated in TOS, forcing a inquiry of how they might work - how does the system know where you're going (assuming that they are not, inefficiently,  simple single-destination systems).  If there is an answer to that, I predict it will be: there's an app for that!  Now that all digital display screens (and controls) have become holographic projections, it seems plausible that everyone carries around the credit-card size digital device that replaces phones, tablets and computers.  Pre-selecting you destination before walking into the nearest transporter might be the most convenient method.  With this new level of tech, residents of the 25th century live with a slick, glowing augmented reality, far removed from a more grounded, organic existence.

As for the form of the show, many will ask: why can't we have stand-alone episodes.  Conversely, I have, for a while now, asked what if Next Generation had been able to be constructed as a long arc, it could have been epic.  The 40 minute episode didn't really have a beginning, middle, end,  structure.  There was a build-up of the problem-at-hand, and a resolution with less than a minute to go.  There wasn't much of and end, just a stop to the episode.  A good portion of the series felt like discrete points, without much continuity other than involving the same characters.  So, count me as one who does not miss the stand-alone episodes.  There is some difficulty in finding a position between vastly separated episodes,  and fragments of one story. I think this an area that the Mandalorian could have handled better, as it feels like a bunch of separate tales trying to be one unified story.  If there is a let-down to the form of Picard, it is that, even as a season-arc, the end comes with a few minutes to go, without addressing the major crisis at hand.  After millennia of preparing to eradicate galactic life, some extremely  powerful entity is quickly thwarted, and no one gives it a further thought. In very non-Starfleet thinking, no one attempts to question who this race is, what they might really be about, or how to avert their potential threats in the future.  Furthermore, the appearance of hundreds of Starfleet vessels, of the latest class, and in nearly instant time, is pure fanboy ridiculousness. Where previous crisis situations required the attention of the ONLY, incomplete, vessel with the region, now entire advanced fleets are ready on a moments notice to intervene on non-Starfleet missions.  The video-game fell ruins the internal logic that the Star Trek world is built upon.  But, if this series is still finding its way, like its progenitors, the future of Star Trek looks ready to continue the quality reflection of our own world, 55 years on.

Russia's Locked Doors (Amerika)

History has apparently come a long way in the last ten years, from when the US was the sole Superpower, and Russia was a regional power dreaming of returning to the global Superpower stage. Now, the US has bowed in allegiance.  Irony officially died this week when Trump attacked Germany for having "too strong " of ties with Russia. Remember four years ago when conservatives suggested President Obama would be committing treason if he negotiated with Iran? Or, when the right lost their minds when President Obama didn't stand up and risk war to aggressively counter Russia's advance into Crimea? (while at the same time denouncing Hillary Clinton as a warhawk) Well, Republicans aren't anything if not schizophrenic. After eight years of hysterical conspiracies about the Muslim-commie Obama, everything they "feared" is actively being implemented. All while being actively embraced.  It seems their modus operandi is to denounce in others (erroneously) exactly what you want.

Where will this end?  Perhaps the plan is a Russian-American Axis which leaves a broken post-Nato Europe.  Perhaps Trump is not President Greg Stillson, as I have suspected. Maybe he is really haunted by the nuclear, tormented to the point of desperation.  Maybe his plan is to surrender the Cold War, after a ridiculous twenty-five year wait past its end.  This would explain his "nuclear" comments during the campaign (and the summit)  and his friendly submissiveness to North Korea, along with his rationalization that it was to prevent a nuclear bomb "falling on your family."  While submissive, it is not friendly in the case of Russia, and this all feels like a beaten, last-ditch attempt at survival in the form of surrender.  Where is Captain Kirk, and what would he do? [1]  And why is any of this necessary? There has been no immanent threat that must be dealt with without the luxury of long-term diplomacy. In any case it is not American strength, and not the aggressive, fearless Reaganism that conservatives demand, and that Trump seemed to exude during the campaign.  If strong and fearless is not a possibility for Trump, the question then becomes why not play the nice guy?  He could be Obama to the ultimate extent.  Rather, he pleases our adversaries while being the abusive spouse to our allies: Canada, Germany, NATO, etc. have all become the scapegoats of a drunken rage.[2]  There appears no rational answer, other than Trump is out to serve Russia.  The only other possibility, one that is not personal to Trump, is that we are in some deep shit that we don't know about. Maybe it's not Trump's personal paranoia of a nightmare nuclear scenario, but an actual blackmail threat. Given the alarms raised this week, perhaps we really are being brought to our knees, and to avoid actual destruction Trump is trying to appease our enemies. This might be the only scenario that makes sense, although it doesn't seem to fit known facts - How could we have come to this point- negotiating from a point of total weakness, even as a Superpower? Beyond the threat of complete computer/digital erasure or electrical system disintegration (and nuclear meltdown), the only un-countered dangers would be new super-weapons reported over the last few years (16 warhead ICBMS, 100 MT drone submarines, nuclear powered cruise missiles). But, using these to extort ransom seems unlikely. This would be too much for a James Bond story. 

Even if Trump is really fighting for our existential survival, his priorities have been clear so far as he has attacked (aggressively) the media, academics and the courts. These are all the institutions that sustain the superior elements of our culture, the pinnacle of our historic development.  Add in alliances and maybe even our military, and not only is our high culture in danger, but our very existence as a civilization is in grave danger regardless of any external threats [3]. The threat of a Russian-American oligarchy would be globally and historically devastating, but this seems the more likely goal and possibly as unwelcome as anything else.

[1] Whatever the conditions that Trump is dealing with, his behavior displays nothing but a weak loser, the very opposite of a strong hero.
[2] Seriously, what kind of asshole does this?  Attack allies and appease adversaries - it's so absurd and plainly stupid that it would be laughable if not unfolding right in front of us.
[3] In another display of extreme irony, it seems that Trump's rejection of our Western European origin is doing more damage to our cultural heritage than Social Justice Warriors are doing on campuses,. 

The Safety Dance

Political celebrity/imbecile Sarah Palin has attacked President Obama's latest Nuclear Posture review, claiming "we miss Ronald Reagan." Ignoring the fact that Reagan almost got us all killed, he was the first president to advocate the abolishment of nuclear weapons.  His goal was to meet with Gorbachev by 1996 and dismantel the final remaining weapons in each nuclear arsenal.  Now, Obama is only the second president to advocate the complete abolishment of nuclear weapons.  Therefore, as far as nuclear ideology goes, he is directly in line with Reagan.  So, once again Sarah Palin reveals her ignorance and her lack of political and historic understanding.  As for the new START treaty, there is little reason to criticize Obama.  The 1500 warhead limit still provides far more WMD firepower than we need.  A massive nuclear arsenal in a post-Cold War is beyond absurd and a necessary element of final completion of that conflict is the reduction of a complete strategic stockpile [1].  This 1500 limit is similar to what would have been the START III treaty in the 1990s, had it been ratified and not discarded by the Bush administration. What this new treaty does is just catch us up to 1990 levels, and we are still 10 years behind in reductions.  The neo-con reactions can only indicate their warmonger intentions and their continued wish for a U.S-dominated armageddon.


 For more, I turn to commentator extraordinaire Jon Stewart:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
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[1] I would not push for complete nuclear disarmament in an increasingly chaotic world with renegade countries developing WMDs.  As Carl Sagan stated while discussing nuclear war: a few nuclear weapons make you safer than none.

Nellis Range Tour

Nevada outback road trip 2009.11.16

I couldn't go to Las Vegas without going out to see the various military locations around the Nellis Range.  Besides wanting to bring to life some of the remotest areas and the "loneliest roads," there is something captivating about the historical uniqueness of this area.  The isolation, the potential secrets - the mystique.  All of it waiting "out there".  Here are the dark, hidden inner workings of the Cold War, and the who-knows-what activities that are surely still conducted.  So, with a large supply of water and a small but precise survival kit, one that would let Bear Grylls live comfortably, we set off at first light to circumnavigate this immense area.

After leaving Las Vegas the first point of interest was Creech AFB, There were a few C-17s parked, and a few Predators were being worked on out on the ramp.

One thing that becomes quite clear by the time one leaves Indian Springs is how perfect this place is for covert activities. The mountains seem to become a giant natural wall that seals off the NTTR on the south, west, most of the north and the east.

The next waypoint was passing the "town' of Mercury. If one could, taking Mercury Road into the NTS would lead past a nuclear wasteland of hundreds of Cold War explosions, and as the road turned into Groom Lake Road would go through Station 700 into Area 51 and out to Highway 375 by Rachel.

After a detour into Death Valley we passed some of the visible radar stations of the Tolicha Peak Electronic Combat Range.  Despite a Green Flag in progress, there were no aircraft out at his point.  With the exception of Goldfield, an extremely aged and run-down gas-less town, there is nothing between Beatty and Tonopah.  Well, except a few brothels (some shut down), some radar domes, a strange hillside construct,  and a gas station abandoned eons ago about 25 miles north of Beatty.  After six hours, we reached Tonopah, where we stopped for lunch and to gas up for the remote leg of the trip.

We then set out on Highway 6, the "Grand Army of the Republic Highway" (a name which makes me hear the voice of Emperor Palpatine). This highway runs along the north side of the Nellis Range and through the heart of the flight operations, as the Desert and Reveille MOAs extend far beyond the NTTS.  Coming out of the Tonopah mountains into the Ralston Valley really gives an introduction into the type of terrain in this region. One can see for twenty miles to the next range, but in that visual space there is nothing.  Eventually, as one seems to be making no progress to the other side, roads begin to pop up.  After passing the derelict Tonopah Airport, we came to the entrance of the Tonopah Test Range, the original and final home of the F-117.  Unfortunately there were no B-2s (or anything else) flying weapons tests.

Looking down AR502 to the Tonopah Test Range

Upon reaching Warm Springs - which is one abandoned building: The Warm Springs Bar & Cafe (apparently built in the late 70s and probably shut down in the late 80s), we turned on to the "Extraterrestrial Highway".  Although one could continue on to see other interesting things: the Base Camp airfield a few miles up and the nuclear test sites of Project Faultless and Halligan Mesa. At this point we had passed approximately nine cars since leaving Tonopah.

The first thing one sees past Warm Springs are signs warning of "Low Flying Aircraft", the one here being to changed to "Cow Flying Aircraft". Despite these signs in the valleys of Reveille, Sand Spring, Tikaboo, and Pahranagat, there were no indications of any aircraft.  After progressing through the first valley, the road begins to turn through the mountains and into open range farms.  This stretch of road gets really long, and attention is required to avoid the cows in the road.  The only objects of interest is the occasional body of water, some of it iced over.  As expected, the most treacherous part of the journey was between Tonopah and Rachel, particularly after Warm Springs.  Finally, after about half an hour without any signs of humanity, a truck passed near the Twin Springs Ranch.  From here there were about four cars before Rachel.  After passing the Cedar Gate turnoff and entering Queen City Summit Pass, the Sand Spring Valley finally opened.  The first thing that was noticeable was a truck moving behind The Farms, possibly to the Area 51 back gate. Secondly the white dots of Rachel were visible, although still twenty miles away, as Rachel sits at the south end of a massive bowl, north of the highway is twenty-five miles of nothing.

After stopping to look down the road to the back gate of Area 51, we headed up to Mailbox Road.  Here we stopped at the infamous black mailbox.  Some pictures I've seen showed it sporting a KQRS sticker, but this seems to have been removed by 2008.  As I photographed it, I noticed that truck parked here was an Area 51 security vehicle, with a Camo Dude listening to the radio (which is apparently an unusual occurrence).

Moving on, we came to Groom Lake Road after a nine hour drive.  A fast moving vehicle could be seen approaching Groom Road from Mailbox Road.  As this was my first excursion to the area, everything felt intense, and I didn't feel like waiting for whomever it was to show up. 

Once again, the sky was silent.  There were no exotic, uber-secret flight tests coming from over the mountains.  And there were no B-1s, B-52s or A-10s making bombing runs on Range 61.  The day was beginning to fade, and after a few brief moments it was time to move on from the surreal, serene isolation back to the hyper-real kinetics of The Strip.  Making our way back into mountains, the terrain seemed less isolating.  We passed the new Alien Research Center and the shell of the original Alien Jerky building as we moved on to Crystal Springs, a wonderful shaded lake, where there were a large number of vehicles parked without anyone in sight (possibly a commuter lot for clandestine contractors?  As it has been reported that cars parked here are unusual, it would seem to indicate extra activity in the area.)

Driving down through the peaceful Pahranagat Valley, the sun began to slowly set, casting a red light. The calmness was unbroken as no Red Force aggressors were coming in from Caliente. At Alamo, 170 miles from the last gas station, we filled up.  Once dark, the drive seemed to feel long, this stretch didn't really have much to see.  Finally the darkness was broken by the intensity of the Las Vegas lights.

The End of Victory Culture

Last Book Read - The End of  Victory Culture - Tom Engelhardt

Fifty years ago today, October 2nd, 1959, The Twilight Zone premiered on television, portraying a new dimension of horror and uncertainty which has become a fundamental inspiration for an entire era of culture, including the recent ultra-post-modern Lost.  Like film noir before it, the themes of  The Twilight Zone, the uncertainty, the hidden dangers, the fear of the unknown, were possible only through the holes forming in American victory culture. The underlying neuroses of the culture, created by the beginnings of the Cold War and the nuclear age, were finally breaking through to the surface, and while not addressed overtly, they were omnipresent and influencing all aspects of American culture.

In The End of Victory Culture, Engelhardt traces the demise of victory culture through its earliest origins to the post 9/11 world.  He begins long before World War II, tracing the lineage back to colonial America, discussing atrocities throughout American history.  I think its easy to understand that this victory culture - the one we learned in school, and the one that likes to come out during oversimplified conversation, was always a facade but was a construct that was sustainable - for a time -under an emerging American leadership. Of course, anyone with any depth could tell by 2003, with the invasion of Iraq, that the American myth was dead.  So it seems that his historic introduction is far too lengthy and sometimes unnecessary, but finally we get to the beginning of the Cold War.


The atomic bomb that leveled Hiroshima also blasted openings into a netherworld of consciousness where victory and defeat, enemy and self, threatened to merge.  Shadowed by the bomb, victory became conceivable only under the most limited of conditions, and an enemy too diffuse to be comfortably located beyond national borders had to be confronted in an un-American spirit of doubt (6).

Faced with doomsday weapons of our own creation, wars were now unfightable, or at least unwinnable.  This led to the necessity of new operative agencies and underground freedom fighters and proxy wars.  "'War' had ceased to be a military operation. Left to the armed forces in those years was fantasy." (81)  Unable to find global solutions, America lost itself in the world of consumerism. "the United States was involved in a global 'war', yet Americans were military unmenaced. . .the country was reimagining itself as a magic kingdom."

In 1950s America, the worlds of consumer arcadia and global fear, of twenty-four-hour-a-day television and twenty-four-hour-a-day airborne nuclear-armed bombers coexisted.  In one of these worlds, Americans half-fancied that they had stepped beyond history into a postindustrial landscape of 'affluence' where 'leisure' might soon replace work almost entirely and the main problem was an inability to find problems. (87)

 This leisure filled existence "looked like a mass society from which there might be no exit for the individual."  While containment kept communism secured, it also kept the individual contained in the American lifestyle where image became valued over substance.  Traditional narratives fell apart and the only stories that seemed to hold their form were in pop culture, particularly television.  Here Engelhartd discusses the contradictions inherent in this mass culture where elements of sub-culture were appropriated, purified and produced for consumption.  White pop music took from underground black music and brought with it "an element of disorder and sexuality associated with darkness."

"Some of [the young] rushed to embrace the very nightmares their parents were conjuring up. In the rhythms of an unknown music, some were ready to discover a new kind of freedom story. In grown-up terrors, some found dark humor.  Behind a frozen universe of abundance and destruction, some spotted pleasure,excitement, movement, energy." (136)  The gruesome horror-filled comics became a target of decency advocates, but were eventually taken over to be corporate controlled.  Rock music and television came to be major industries by being marketed to the young.

Meanwhile the victory weapon became unusable. Engelhardt points out how the popular fears of nuclear conflict dissipated after the Cuban Missile Crisis, while in reality the Soviets were finally fielding a force that was highly capable of devastation. "With weapons of seemingly limitless destructive capacity, however, the idea of victory began to shrink." Conflicts had to be restricted and containment applied to oneself.  These limited wars would "perform a function midway between the abstractness of a show of force and the terrible concreteness of annihilative conflict." They could not bring about a "radical alteration in the distribution of power." (159)  We were locked into a stalemate, unable to win or lose.  Credibility replaced victory, but it could not be a viable substitute.  A quote by Daniel Ellsberg reveals the dangers we faced as a victorious entity, "we have been in the process of fighting monsters without stop for a generation and a half, looking all that time into the nuclear abyss.  And the abyss had looked back into us." This danger was, of course, that we had solely used nuclear weapons in the past, and at several points in the early Cold War had seriously discussed using them again.

Like all Cold War books, Engelhardt spends a great deal of time discussing Vietnam.  Most interesting here, is his illustration of "reversals"  Unable to achieve limited victory despite how much military might we expended, the U.S. military was forced to reverse all normal notions of success and failure.  President Nixon himself was forced to reverse that office's image and become a "madman" (A lesson learned well and now deployed by the "axis of evil") to convince the enemy he was capable of anything in an effort to provoke their surrender. The streets of America became a battlefield at home and at wars end reconstruction needed to be done here rather than in theater.  This reconstruction really peaked during the Reagan years (and the buildup to the Second Cold War).  After a decade of feeling the loss of the Vietnam War, we were finally able to achieve victory through pop culture, mainly in film.

When Engelhardt comes to discussing Desert Storm, his analysis would fit in completely with Baudrillard's The Gulf War Did Not Take Place.  He approaches it from the angle that the entire event was really just a staged production by the American military and government.  But, I think he really reads too much into it, particularly regarding the public's understanding of it.  It would seem that America was more concerned about getting it right and provided (from a strategic standpoint) everything necessary to ensure a swift and contained victory.  If it was just a one-sided bloodbath, then at least we have apparently learned from it.  I believe that it was the last war that will ever be fought in a conventional style.  The 2003 "shock and awe" campaign  was nothing of the sort, compared to twelve years earlier.  Furthermore, our continued Middle East campaign has become much more surgical in nature.  For instance, our bomb size has gone from 2000 lb to 250 lb now in order to minimize blast.  We have built MOABs and Bunker Busters, but when used these will certainly be less devastating than a massive assault of hundreds of aircraft that was normal by the end of Vietnam.

Finally, with the end of the Cold War, Engelhardt notes that we were really left without an identifiable enemy, and this led to complications of our own identity.  Even the latest incarnation of G.I. Joe was left to find new types of wars and new enemies. Until 9/11.

With the events of 9/11,  "the bomb's most essential message- of potentially civilization busting, planet-rendering, or even planet-ending destruction- reinforced over so many years by terrifying Cold War fears and pop culture fantasies, had finally come home" (306).  The destruction, although tremendous and considered "ground zero," was not nuclear and was not as nearly devastating as it could have been.  The president, a better actor than anyone previous, attempted to resurrect victory culture.  But now, following year after year of stalled progress,  this victory culture is clearly unsustainable.

In discussing the events of post-9/11 America, Engelhardt picks up where he left off with Desert Storm, the media production.  He notes that the history of the late twentieth century, aside from a few key points of the Cold War could be defined in terms of consumer technology, from the automobile to the ipod.  He discusses consumer society, "in the cyber-marketplace, history has been superseded by an new kind of storytelling." (329)  These fabricated narratives, used to sell toys, games, television and film are the same kinds of narratives used by the government to sell wars.  Military reality has crossed into fiction, and the distinction has been blurred, leaving new weapons inspired by fiction and new fictions inspired by weapons.


It's been a long path from August 6th, 1945, to the present moment, a long, long time to wait for apocalyptic catastrophe to strike in the most victorious nation on the planet, which, in more recent times, has been touted as the globe's last superpower, its sole hyperpower, its global sheriff, its New Rome. (332)


Throughout the book Engelhardt refers to a "narrative" and the resulting lack of narrative. While he uses these terms for the specifically American world, its interesting to view the events discussed here in terms of a more historic and global theory. What he says has much in common with the post-modern theorists.  He discusses technology, consumerism and corporatism in the same light. Landmarks are gone, leaving only the logos.  The "real" sources are gone, leaving only the baseless hyper-real.  There are no more narratives, or a meta-narrative, of history.  The only one now are created in television, films and games, existing independently, and their reality is blurry like the reality of post-Cold War history.  The more we progress as a technological society, the more truth seems obscured and lost in The Twilight Zone.

While being overly verbose and perhaps too politically correct, this book does shed interesting light on the underlying psychology of America at the end of the modern age. What is most interesting is not what is explicitly stated but the implications suggested by the resulting "lack of a narrative." As revealed here, the Cold War was the force driving America from the modern to the post-modern world, a notion emphasized in the post-9/11 conclusions.

99 Red Balloons

For those of us who grew up during the Cold War, we were well aware of what would probably happen if the US and the Soviets went to war. Within a few hours everything would go to Hell (almost literally). What fascinates me is what would have happened if the Cold War had become a hot one using conventional weapons and leaving the nukes hidden away. Many films and books have presented various scenarios, most of which I find highly unlikely. What I'd really like to know is how the government thought this might happen, how they trained for it, and what plans, procedures and such existed for it. Obviously the Powers that be thought a conventional war was at least a possibility, otherwise they wouldn't rationally have spent the hundreds of trillions of dollars on forty years of military build-up. So far the first bit of info I've come across is "Dropshot", the war plan originally conceived in 1949.

This essay by John Reilly explores the US plan for World War III (Dropshot) circa 1957. In the age before ICBMs became the main strategic weapon, it was still seemingly possible for a U.S./ Soviet war to be fought conventionally. The plan was for an initally defensive war against an aggressive Russia that was actively seeking expansion and eventually some sort of global domination. This alternative history explores how this might have happened under the right conditions. Reilly makes some interesting political and economic points along the way.

"There is a good argument to be made that the United States took as little hurt from the Cold War as it did because the president during the 1950s was that logistics expert, Dwight David Eisenhower. . . Using his own good judgment to gauge just what the Soviets could or would do, he starved the U.S. military during the 1950s to let give the consumer economy room to breathe." Compare this to the 1990s of the Clinton administration, where the military was starved, but the economy did quite well.

Reilly contemplates what would have happened if Eisenhower had been replaced by Adlai Stevenson. His ambition to destroy the communist bloc was similar to Reagan's, although his timing would have been wrong. It wasn't until the 1980s, when the Soviet's finally "exhausted the growth capacity of the command economy," that the opportunity to pressure the Soviets farther finally occurred. In my opinion, Reagan's administration may not have been clever enough to know with certainty that they could break the Soviets by outspending them militarily. Reagan played a dangerous game of brinkmanship, such as the deployment of the Pershing II missiles. If they were confident of economic victory, these aggressive stances seem unnecessary. I think Reagan got lucky. He took a big gamble that could have got us all killed, but was fortunate enough to find success.

Also in Reilly's scenario, Stalin stays in power. If Stalin had lived longer, past 1953, he may have planned to fight a decisive war. If Stevenson backed up his own idealism by sending forces to Europe, Stalin very well could have countered by launching his offensive. Thirty million Americans would be needed for service, and unlike World War II, this one would be devastating for the American economy. The U.S. would have been forced to become a command-economy state.

The plan was for NATO to hold the front, until the American forces could arrive, which could be a year. IT suggest that the Soviets could very well advance past Germany, and the UK would probably not be held.The second phase would be an offensive to occupy Russia. Dropshot notes that invasion from the Far East or the Middle East would be impractical, and only an offensive straight in from Europe would work.

Finally, the aftermath of a successful war would have had terrible effects on the world economy, although it may have been less damaging than World War II. Russia might have been able to transition to a market economy with less resistance. In America, collectivism and Socialism might have become instituted as the command economy which helped win the war would be viewed as superior to the market economy. The social revolution of the 1960s would not occur, and presumably the pessimism of the 40s and 50s would be reinforced, with the continuing view that the world is a dangerous place. Positively, The arms race would never have occured, and the threat of nuclear annihilation would be gone.

But, would the outcome have really been so positive? I certainly don't think a communist victory would be a good thing. However, An American victory might have had its downsides as well. The US would have global domination of the advanced world, and without any opposition would be free to do anything it wishes. This unhindered power may have been too much to contain, and would probably be used on scale far exceeding what we have seen in the 21st Century, where the US has done things that would have previously been unthinkable, both constitutionally and morally, due to the possibility of destroying the integrity of our 200 year history. [1] In the 80s miniseries Amerika, the Soviets achieved global victory, and the conditions under their rule, however intolerable, were unescapable "There was nowhere else to go." A post-World War III Socialist America could have utopian possibilities, [2] but it would also have the potential to become a tyrannical, dystopian police state. Having two equally-matched superpowers during the Cold War meant there was a Yin/Yang balance, and there were possibilities to choose from, depending on what type of system your allegiences might fall.


Geek edits:
[1] example: Star Wars - Palpatine and the fall of the senate
[2] example: Star Trek (although despite the superficial utopian Socialism, ST could be viewed as a communist society , see this article for explanation.