Tag Archives: peace

what countries U.S. combat troops are in at the end of 2024

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Twice a year the President is required to inform Congress about where U.S. troops are engaged in combat. This seems to leave a lot out – most obviously, naval and air force operations around the world that are nominally based out of the U.S. and its territories. Massive U.S. bases in Japan, Korea, and elsewhere that are not obviously and directly engaged in combat. “Advisors”, special operations, covert actions, intelligence operations, and contractor operations of various kinds. Satellites, somewhat obviously. Nonetheless, the report says U.S. troops are engaged in combat in:

  • Iraq and Syria – lumped together, somewhat oddly. U.S. combat troops are on the ground inside Syria, a sovereign nation which has not invited us to be there. They are supposedly fighting Islam-inspired terrorists, but not the ones that just overthrew the country’s government. The U.S. is allied with Kurdish groups, which were fighting the Syrian government (but were not allied with the group that successfully overthrew the Syrian government), and are fighting Turkey, which is a U.S. ally and NATO member. The U.S. directly bombed “Iran-affiliated groups” in Syria twice in November. The short letter does not mention any U.S. support for Israeli operations inside Syria, but it is hard to imagine the U.S. being completely uninvolved. The U.S. still has troops in Iraq (Mission Accomplished) 21 years after invading that country. These troops are supposedly invited to be there by the Iraqi government, and are supporting “Kurdish Iraqi security forces” and providing “limited support to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization mission in Iraq”. I am kind of baffled by these last two statements, but I guess I am just ignorant.
  • “Arabian Peninsula Region”. This is an anti-terrorist mission supposedly at the invitation of the Yemeni government. At the same time, we are hearing about massive famine in Yemen caused by the Saudi attacks on the country, and it is not exactly clear what the U.S. role in that is.
  • Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. U.S. troops are involved in anti-terrorist actions in all these countries, supposedly at the invitation of the host countries.
  • Somalia – U.S. troops are involved in anti-terrorist combat operations at the invitation of the government. This one is pretty ugly, but many accounts.
  • Djibouti – Djibouti is basically a massive U.S. military base for many operations in Africa and the Middle East. Again, it’s a little odd that this gets mentioned when others don’t – what about Bahrain, UAE, Oman, Qatar?
  • Cuba – Guantanamo Bay is still open for business with 30 prisoners. Maybe Biden should just drop these people off in Florida or Texas on January 19.
  • Philippines – again, odd that this massive base gets mentioned when other massive ones do not, but it is because there are some in-country operations U.S. troops are involved in.
  • Israel – U.S. troops are defending Israel while it is attacking its occupied territories and sovereign neighbors.
  • The report mentions small numbers of U.S. troops in Egypt and Kosovo.
  • Afghanistan – “United States military personnel remain postured outside Afghanistan to address threats to the United States homeland and United States interests that may arise from inside Afghanistan.” Um, so this does not make it clear where they are, how many troops there are or what they are actually doing, if anything…
  • Niger – Well, here is a country that kicked us out following a military coup, and apparently we actually left when they asked us to.
  • There are 80,000 U.S. troops deployed to NATO countries in western Europe, according to the letter. Again, it’s a little unclear to me why these are listed while troops in Japan and Korea are not.

the other 2024 Nobel prizes

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I already talked about the Nobel prize in economics. You can read about the others here.

  • physics: “foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks”
  • chemistry: “computational protein design” and “protein structure prediction”
  • physiology or medicine: “the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation”
  • literature: poetry – yay humanities
  • peace: “efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again”

So AI and AI-assisted biotechnology basically. And I hope the taboo against nuclear weapons ever being used is as strong as this suggests it is.

April 2024

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Most frightening and/or depressing story: Peter Turchin’s description of a “wealth pump” leading to stagnation and political instability seems to fit the United States pretty well at this moment. The IMF shows that global productivity has been slowing since the US-caused financial crisis in 2008. In Turchin’s model, our November election will be a struggle between elites and counter-elites who both represent the wealthy and powerful. That sounds about right, but I still say it is a struggle between competence and incompetence, and competence is a minimum thing we need to survive in a dangerous world. In early April I thought things were trending painfully slowly, but clearly, in Biden’s direction. As I write this in early May I am no longer convinced of that.

Most hopeful story: Some tweaks to U.S. trade policy might be able to significantly ease the “border crisis” and create a broad political coalition of bigots, big business, and people who buy things in stores.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: If the singularity is in fact near, our worries about a productivity slow down are almost over, and our new worries will be about boredom in our new lives of leisure. It doesn’t seem like a good idea to count on this happening in the very near future, and therefore stop trying to solve the problems we have at the moment. This would be one of those “nice to have” problems. If it does in fact materialize, the places to be will be the ones that manage to shut down Peter Turchin’s wealth pump and spread the newfound wealth, rather than the places where a chosen few live god-like existences while leaving the masses in squalor.

October 2023 in Review

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Most frightening and/or depressing story: Israel-Palestine. From the long-term grind of the failure to make peace and respect human rights, to the acute horror causing so much human suffering and death at this moment, to the specter of an Israeli and/or U.S. attack on Iran. It’s frightening and depressing – but of course it is not my feelings that matter here, but all the people who are suffering and going to suffer horribly because of this. The most positive thing I can think of to say is that when the dust settles, possibly years from now, maybe cooler heads will prevail on all sides. Honorable mention for most frightening story is the 2024 U.S. Presidential election starting to get more real – I am sure I and everyone else will have more to say about this in the coming (exactly one as I write this on November 5, 2023) year!

Most hopeful story: Flesh eating bacteria is becoming slightly more common, but seriously you are not that likely to get it. And this really was the most positive statement I could come up with this month!

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: The generally accepted story of the “green revolution“, that humanity saved itself from widespread famine in the face of population growth by learning to dump massive quantities of fossil fuel-derived fertilizer on farm fields, may not be fully true.

keep an eye on Iran…

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I always say I don’t want to comment on fast-moving current events, and I always say I don’t want to comment on other countries’ politics, especially ones I have never been to and have no connection to, and most especially Israeli politics. But I have thoughts, you don’t have to read them and here they are:

  1. My heart goes out to all the human beings suffering in this conflict.
  2. What could be the motive of the Hamas leadership and fighters responsible for this attack. One story could be that they are angry about the expanding settlements and other perceived losses of human rights and dignity, and that they feel they have exhausted all political recourse and only violence is left to make their point. Maybe this is all there is to it.
  3. But…assuming Hamas has some rational political aims, it is hard to imagine this furthering those aims. It seems more likely to embolden the most conservative parties in the Israeli government, and to rally to Israeli public and international governments to support them even more than they already do.
  4. I have heard suggestions that the political aim could be to stop the Israel-Saudi Arabia diplomatic normalization process. Iran would gain from this. But if there is even a hint that Iran was involved in planning this attack, if anything it seems more likely to accelerate that process after an initial pause.
  5. Which brings me to Iran. This just seems extremely risky for them. Reports are that their leadership has “publicly praised” the attacks. Maybe they have to do that for domestic political reasons. But again, if there is even a whiff… the Israeli right wing could use this as their excuse to attack Iran.
  6. The Israeli government has repeatedly said “they will not allow” Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon. How close are they to obtaining a nuclear weapon? Very close, it would seem. If the Israeli government can find some evidence that Iran was behind this attack, it would seem to give them the justification they need for a military attack. And it might just bring enough international opinion to their side, or at least keep it on the sidelines, to allow them to do it.
  7. If someone were to want to fabricate evidence that Iran was involved…well, before 2003 I might have said that was far fetched, but it is hard to imagine more flimsy see-through evidence than the W. Bush administration came up with against Iraq in 2003. And that was adequate to justify a mostly unprovoked invasion of a sovereign UN member nation at the time.
  8. Am I saying this was a false flag attack? No, as much as I enjoy a good conspiracy theory, I won’t say that without evidence. I’m just saying that false flag or not, partisans are smart enough to take advantage of something like this to justify their preferred course of action.
  9. So…it would not surprise me if Israel attacks Iran in the coming weeks or months. And it would not surprise me if the U.S. supports that or at least remains silent. It would surprise me if they joined in, but in the end that seems unnecessary. An the major players in the region of Egypt to Saudi Arabia to the UAE will probably be just fine with it too, whatever they say in public.

February 2023 in Review

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Sorry to all my faithful readers worldwide (who I could undoubtedly count with the fingers of one hand with some left over) for my lengthy posting gap. Anyway, let’s have a look at what I was thinking about in February.

Most frightening and/or depressing story: Pfizer says they are not doing gain of function research on potential extinction viruses. But they totally could if they wanted to. And this at a time when the “lab leak hypothesis” is peeking out from the headlines again. I also became concerned about bird flu, then managed to convince myself that maybe it is not a huge risk at the moment, but definitely a significant risk over time.

Most hopeful story: Jimmy Carter is still alive as I write this. The vision for peace he laid out in his 2002 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech is well worth a read today. “To suggest that war can prevent war is a base play on words and a despicable form of warmongering. The objective of any who sincerely believe in peace clearly must be to exhaust every honorable recourse in the effort to save the peace. The world has had ample evidence that war begets only conditions that beget further war.”

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: It was slim pickings this month, but Jupiter affects the Sun’s orbit, just a little bit.

Jimmy Carter’s Nobel Prize Lecture

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Here are a few words from Jimmy Carter’s 2002 Nobel Peace Prize lecture:

It is clear that global challenges must be met with an emphasis on peace, in harmony with others, with strong alliances and international consensus. Imperfect as it may be, there is no doubt that this can best be done through the United Nations, which Ralph Bunche described here in this same forum as exhibiting a “fortunate flexibility” – not merely to preserve peace but also to make change, even radical change, without violence.

He went on to say: “To suggest that war can prevent war is a base play on words and a despicable form of warmongering. The objective of any who sincerely believe in peace clearly must be to exhaust every honorable recourse in the effort to save the peace. The world has had ample evidence that war begets only conditions that beget further war.”

We must remember that today there are at least eight nuclear powers on earth, and three of them are threatening to their neighbors in areas of great international tension. For powerful countries to adopt a principle of preventive war may well set an example that can have catastrophic consequences.

If we accept the premise that the United Nations is the best avenue for the maintenance of peace, then the carefully considered decisions of the United Nations Security Council must be enforced. All too often, the alternative has proven to be uncontrollable violence and expanding spheres of hostility.

For more than half a century, following the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, the Middle East conflict has been a source of worldwide tension. At Camp David in 1978 and in Oslo in 1993, Israelis, Egyptians, and Palestinians have endorsed the only reasonable prescription for peace: United Nations Resolution 242. It condemns the acquisition of territory by force, calls for withdrawal of Israel from the occupied territories, and provides for Israelis to live securely and in harmony with their neighbors. There is no other mandate whose implementation could more profoundly improve international relationships.

Perhaps of more immediate concern is the necessity for Iraq to comply fully with the unanimous decision of the Security Council that it eliminate all weapons of mass destruction and permit unimpeded access by inspectors to confirm that this commitment has been honored. The world insists that this be done.

Jimmy Carter

You could argue the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 is the moment that broke the Security Council. The United States did that. Would the world be in a perfect place today if that had not happened. Of course not. Would it be in a better place? I think so. But we are where we are. A question now is whether there is a path back to a functioning Security Council. The UN has other functions, but without this its security function is mostly dead.

What if the Security Council members were nominated and elected by the General Assembly. They would need to not have any violations of the UN’s charter within the past decade, and they would need to make up a majority of the world’s military power, measured by military spending I guess. How else would you measure this? What if the Security Council members submitted military forces to be under the council’s direct control. These could then engage in peace keeping and humanitarian missions. Perhaps they would have the power to arrest convicted criminals and uphold UN resolutions by force if necessary. The existing Security Council members wouldn’t want to give up their power, of course. This might just have to a be a new body created with no input from the existing members. Just thinking out loud here, this may not be the best proposal but with the existing council completely useless somebody needs to think of something new to try.

the stats on war and peace

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I seem to be on a peace rant this morning.

In the U.S. we have half a million people unhoused and at risk of freezing to death this winter. We have 1 in 5 children growing up impoverished and hungry, and the federal government tells us there is no money for universal health care, student loan forgiveness, or to house and feed the people. Yet, at $858 billion for 2023, the military budget is at it highest point ever, and ominously increasing every year.

Popular Resistance.org

That $858 billion sounds low to me. That is probably the Pentagon’s budget for the year. Don’t forget the weapons programs under the Department of Energy, the CIA and the rest of the “intelligence community” spread across various agencies, the Department of Homeland Security, and elements within the FBI and other agencies involved in national security. Then there’s the Veterans Administration, which pretty much everyone supports but is a legacy of many decades of past military spending. Active and retired military personnel do in fact have universal health care, and there is a slight irony there. No, we should not take it away from them, we should extend it to everyone else.

Is the U.S. encircling China?

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Caitlin Johnstone is not an unbiased source, but I tend to agree with her statement here.

The US empire has been surrounding China with military bases and war machinery for many years, in ways Washington would never tolerate China doing in the nations and waters surrounding the United States. There is no question that the US is the aggressor in this increasingly hostile standoff between major powers. Yet we’re all meant to be freaking out about a balloon.

Ask me to show you how the US has been aggressing against China I can show you all the well-documented ways in which the US is encircling China with weapons of war. Ask an empire apologist to show you how China is aggressing against the US and they’ll start babbling about TikTok and balloons.

These things are not equal. Maybe Americans should stop watching out for hostile foreign threats and start looking a little closer to home.

Caitlin Johnstone

Well, actually I don’t agree that we should “stop watching out for hostile foreign threats”. That is exactly what our military and intelligence agencies should be doing. Our politicians and diplomats need to be thinking about how hostile and threatening we appear to others, whether their seemingly hostile actions are in reaction to a perceived threat from us, and whether trying to be less threatening would be in the entire world’s interest.

October 2022 in Review

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Most frightening and/or depressing story: Hurricanes are hitting us (i.e., the United States: New Orleans and Puerto Rico being the examples) and we are not quite recovering back to the trend we were on before the hurricane. This seems to be happening elsewhere too, like the Philippines. This is how a system can decline and eventually collapse – it appears stable in the face of internal stressors until it is faced with an external shock, and then it doesn’t bounce back quite all the way, and each time this happens it bounces back a bit less.

Most hopeful story: Gorbachev believed in the international order and in 1992 proposed a recipe for fixing it: elimination of nuclear and chemical weapons [we might want to add biological weapons today], elimination of the international arms trade, peaceful sharing and oversight of civilian nuclear technology, strong intervention in regional conflicts [he seemed to envision troops under Security Council control], promotion of food security, human rights, population control [seems a bit quaint, but maybe we would replace this with a broader concept of ecological footprint reduction today], economic assistance to poorer countries, and expansion of the Security Council to include at least India, Italy, Indonesia, Canada, Poland, Brazil, Mexico, and Egypt [maybe this list would be a bit different today but would almost certainly include Germany, Japan, Brazil, India, and Indonesia].

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: Here is a big, maybe dumb idea: Maybe the U.S. could build out a modern high speed rail system and electric grid along its interstate highways. Maybe some experts can write me and explain if there are technical reasons this can’t be done. It the reason it can’t be done is that bureaucracy A owns the highways and bureaucracy B owns the tracks and bureaucracy C the power lines, that is not an excuse to fail. You can also charge electric vehicles while they are on the move.