Peace

“When the big nations quit meddling then the world will have peace.” Will Rogers

Principally known for his acerbic wit, Will Rogers knew well from his own experiences about why peace was so elusive. As a Native American of the Cherokee Nation, he had firsthand knowledge of how the big nations treated the little ones. The quote above was not his usual humor, but a serious reflection of the trauma caused by big nations meddling with disastrous results in the affairs of others in order to achieve dominance, often under the guise of doing good while actually doing their worst.

The foreign policy advocated and practiced by Washington and Jefferson was friendly neutrality, avoiding involvement in treaties that could create enemies or dubious friendships. They correctly reasoned that alliances that could draw the US into armed conflict while providing little if any security presented no value and unnecessary risks. It was a foreign policy of peace as an assurance for prosperity; it did not represent fear of foreign relations, but a means to have them peacefully.

Unfortunately, this policy did not last long. Political transformation followed the War of 1812; the Federalist Party virtually disappeared, and from what became known as Jacksonian Democracy, we see the beginning of the Democratic Party, and over time, through various iterations and coalitions of anti-slavery movements, we have the Republican Party. What we also have is the development of “Manifest Destiny”, a concept that was anything but peaceful, and led the US on a path of conquest including the genocide of Native Americans and territorial seizures from Mexico and Spain. So violent did factions within the nation become that the Civil War was the bloodiest conflict in American history, with approximately 650K dead, more than WWI and WWII combined.

There came a period after the Great War where the public and Congress realized that it was questionable alliances that drew America into that disastrous event. They rejected ratification of the treaty to join the League of Nations out of fear that it would again draw the United Sates into international conflicts. The term “Isolationists” came to describe those who expressed a renewed appreciation for the friendly neutrality policies of Washington and Jefferson. Unfortunately the Treaty of Versailles and The Great Depression combined against that sentiment with a global trend of populism, militarization, and expansionism.

Post WWII saw the US and USSR become the two global powers, meddling bullies, each vying for world hegemony. The United Nations did little to mitigate the antagonism as the world formed into three factions, the Soviet Bloc under the Warsaw Pact, the US and its allies under NATO, and what was called the Third World, with some of the latter either victims of meddling by the two super powers, or falling into their respective spheres of influence. The US and USSR pursued infiltration and militarization of emerging nations following the collapse of European colonization in Africa and Southeast Asia. While China was also involved, the Sino-Soviet dispute, based on differences regarding the correct interpretation of Marxism, caused a rift between the two that weakened China’s influence. Its intervention in the Korean conflict was a disastrous adventure that led to destructive Maoist policies causing widespread famine and societal collapse. Calling this period the “Cold War” given an estimated 25M casualties related to various conflicts, civil wars, interventions and genocides, making it the 9th deadliest “war” in world history, seems odd at best, but peaceful it was not.

Under the guise of protecting democracy, that panacea meant to intimidate dissent, the US meddled in the affairs of Korea, Viet Nam, Laos, Thailand, and various African and Latin American countries, with debilitating results for its economy, societal cohesion and political coherence. Despite the negative results, one administration after the other embraces interventionism as a foreign policy, meddling as an international doctrine. Eventually the US jumped into that rabbit hole we call the Middle East conflicts which brought the US into the Afghanistan and Iraq debacles.

America had become a Warfare State; how could peace arise under such conditions? Well it can’t, and despite that we continue meddling, today in Ukraine, tomorrow to be determined. We continue to form unconstitutional alliances with which we find that, for any one of them to involve us in war, it is necessary only for the executive power to decide that its defense is somehow essential to the security of the US. While it is obvious that the rise of central banking combined with the development of the military industrial complex over the past century is no coincidence, the bi-partisan support for this odious cabal is economically unsustainable and morally depraved.

One of my favorite Benjamin Franklin quotes is “Love your enemies; for they shall tell you all your faults.” There are many so called friends that fail to speak the truth to the US as they desire its support toward their own questionable ends, a situation that best serves the interest of our enemies. The fact is that if you want peace, you don’t need to talk to your friends but to your enemies as therein lay the path to achieve that. While the American people may not have these insights regarding peace, it is apparent that they are emotionally and financially exhausted by the lack of it. The leadership of our country reminds me of Will Rogers’ quip about his grandfather:

“When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car.”