----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Pugliese" <debsian at pacbell.net> To: "lbo-talk" <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Tuesday, November 26, 2002 9:16 PM Subject: Re: Inspect This (@ maxspeak.org)
> >..."`irrational and vindictive'' demeanor against adversaries such as
Iraq may help deter conflict.
>
> The view is contained in an internal study, ``Essentials of Post-Cold
> War Deterrence,'' written by the Strategic Command, the multiservice
> headquarters responsible for the nation's strategic nuclear arsenal.>...
>
> Grimly fascinating, Ian.
> For more see, "Minds At War:Nuclear Reality and the Inner Conflicts
> of Defense Policymakers, " by Steven Kull, Basic Books, 1989.
> Reviewed here
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=3947
> by, ahem , McGeorge Bundy, who later wrote a tome himself on The Bomb.
> McGeorge's partner in crime, full name Eugene Victor Debs Rostow just
died.
> http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/26/obituaries/26ROST.html
> Michael Pugliese
> P.S.
> (Kull and Kohut on Polling on Iraq War.
>
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/july-dec02/iraqpolls_10-07-02.htm
l )
>
==========================
I would add that in addition to reading Eliot Cohen's "Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime" the Bushies are probably drawing a lot of insight and inspiration, if that is even an appropriate term, from John Mearsheimer's -Univ. of Chicago if I remember right- "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics" which extends Waltz', Gilpin's and Hedley Bull's notions of "offensive realism" as the primary doctrine international relations.
This makes the situation doubly tragic because those who are embracing perpetual war for perpetual peace, have, in all probability, a tragic view of human history. Whether this tips the neocons into fatalism and the potential for nihilism is hard to say at this point. Needless to say, the Kantian foundations of the Wilsonian Dems. may be no match for the Hobbesians currently in the driver's seat. Peter Gowan has a critique of Mearsheimer's book at: http://www.newleftreview.net/NLR25003.shtml
"If, in the present condition of world politics, in which states are the principal actors, ideas of interstate or international justice play a dominant part in everyday discussion, and ideas of human justice play a smaller part, ideas of cosmopolitan or world justice play very little part at all. The world society or community whose common good they purport to define does not exist except as an idea or myth which may one day become powerful, but has not done so yet....Demands for world justice are therefore demands for the transformation of the system and society of states, and are inherently revolutionary." [Hedley Bull]
The struggle to dissolve the imperialism/terrorism dyad continues.
Cue to Thomas Pogge [arguably Rawls greatest student] and Cynthia Enloe.
Ian