US Military, the world's Top Polluter Not on the Table at COP26.

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

GED/HEO

 

“The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. From this point of view, the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men's brains, not in men's better insights into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange. They are to be sought, not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch.F Engels, Socialism Utopian and Scientific.

 

The issue of the US military Industrial Complex, was not even on the table at COP26 in Glasgow and that is because it is a sham. “Since we are so far from what actually we needed, I think what would be considered a success would be if people realize what a failure this COP is,”, Greta Thunberg, the 18 years old climate activist said about the event. She accurately described the event as, “sort of turning into a greenwash campaign, a P.R. campaign,”

 

We cannot expect a meeting of the representatives of global capitalism to seriously take the steps that are necessary to avert climate catastrophe, a crisis so acute, it threatens life as we know it.  

 

Never ending wars, conflict and violence are an integral aspect of the capitalist mode of production. The arms industry is a very lucrative source of profits for those that invest in it and those who profit from this planet destroying industry cannot avert disaster; the fox cannot be left to guard the henhouse.

 

The panic and constant reference in the mass media to Chinese, and to a lesser extent, Russian aggression will increase the likelihood of environmental disaster and the possibility of nuclear annihilation. What we are not told is Chinese aggression is driven as much by US imperialism and it rapacious question for domination of the world’s resources.

 

Chinese aggression is used to convince the US workers and middle class to support our bloated offense industry. I do believe the defense department was called the department of war at one time which is a much more accurate description.

 

Bloomberg BusinessWeek is concerned that China is developing new weapons and missiles. They are developing “…more exotic weapons including a hypersonic system…”, “…that may one day evade the US missile defense system.” The Pentagon, one of the greatest polluters on the planet, “…predicts that China’s stockpile of operational warheads will more than double by 2030” according to Bloomberg.

Source

The Pentagon, and indeed the US capitalist class as a whole is concerned, after all, the US sells more weapons of mass destruction than the rest of the world combined and the mass media reminds us constantly that the US relationship with China is deteriorating; we need more guns. A major ally like the oil rich Saudi regime would not survive without US weaponry and it is not the only ruthless regime kept afloat by the US taxpayer and the more scared we are, the less likely we are to oppose the cost. What good is Medicare For All if we’re overrun by the “Yellow Peril” bringing communism in to our midst and the Iranians forcing us to be Muslims?

 

So Michael Bloomberg’s Business Week (Bloomberg is worth $49 billion according to Forbes) stresses that “Worker Joe” Biden’s Administration is right to “upgrade” the Navy’s fleet and the air force should “work on developing unmanned means of delivering nuclear weapons……in addition to buying B21 bombers.”

 

BloombergBW admits that even if China quadruples its stockpile it will still, “Lag far behind the 3750 warheads in the US arsenal.” What madness is this?

 

In this struggle for control of the world’s resources and markets, neither the Chinese Stalinist bureaucracy nor the US capitalist class can be trusted. Workers have nothing to gain and certainly have no interest in defending Taiwan. The US sending warships through the South China Sea simply to make a point does not encourage the Chinese government to stop playing catch up with the US on weapons of mass destruction. It has become very clear, that without nuclear weaponry, any country in the world that opposes US imperialist policy is subject to US bombs.

 

As informative as the video above is, it too offers no solutions. It leaves us with no way forward. So the presenter above suggests that as “citizens we have a responsibility to hold our leaders and military accountable.” But we can’t. We are to see ourselves as “one humanity”. But in all honesty, this is pure nonsense, it is utopian. We are all just people; you the reader, me, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk. We just need to change our thinking and that will set it strait. I recommend Engels’ Pamphlet Socialism Utopian and Scientific to get some idea of the basis for the ideas expressed by the narrator and why they are a dead end.  

 

What is absent from the commentary in the video is that we live in a system of production, a society composed of classes with irreconcilable economic interests. And a world with nation states that are also in competition with each other, to the death in the final analysis. The presenter may be a genuine, honest person who wants the best for all of us; most of us want that. But it is this exploitative system and its laws of operation that is the root cause of the crisis and if we refuse to recognize that and its historical origins, we cannot prevent the likelihood of global catastrophe. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.  When we are taught history, we are told of feudalism and how that was a system of exploitation and that there was a ruling class, of slavery both in antiquity and in the colonial US. These social systems did not leave the world stage by people suddenly thinking in a different way, by suddenly waking up one day and calling on the ruling classes to change their ways.

 

These systems of production and the political superstructure that arose from them were put to rest through huge social upheavals that were a product of their irreconcilable internal contradictions.

 

There are links being built between unions in different countries but without an independent political voice, workers in the US or China or throughout the world, have no dialogue with each other; we are the mercy of the billionaires. We also have no real say on international trade or relations. The COP26 conference is an example as is the UN which is nothing but a capitalist club.