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michelle flournoy
Our Real Security: Preventing a New Cold War with China
Pressing for peaceful resolution of U.S.-China tensions in ways that provide mutual benefit for both sides and other Asia-Pacific nations needs to become a peace movement priority.
Dec 08, 2020
Once again a self-defeating Washington consensus threaten the real security interests of the U.S. people. Military confrontations and preparations for great power war with China are a clear and present danger when our priorities should be international collaborations to address real threats to our security: today's and future pandemics and the existential dangers of the climate emergency and nuclear weapons.
With his trade war, provocative military actions, and his election-related scapegoating of China for everything that ails the United States, Donald Trump crystalized a new Cold War with China.
With Joe Biden's election, more than half the nation is exhaling with a sense of relief. Donald Trump's defeat provides a stay of execution for U.S. democracy and will hopefully lead to life-affirming changes in U.S. domestic policies. Unfortunately, the rhetoric will be different, but not a lot more can be expected to change as Biden, Blinken, General Austin and their comrades embrace the Cold War with China.
PARADIGMS, DOCTRINES & ALTERNATIVES
Two paradigms illuminate the present danger. First is the Thucydides Trap, named for the ancient Greek historian's analysis of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. He stressed the inevitable tensions between rising and declining powers that more often than not have resulted in catastrophic wars. The post-WWII Bretton Woods international order and the transformation of the Pacific Ocean into an "American Lake" were both imposed by the United States when China was an extremely poor and technologically undeveloped nation. Chinese needs and interests were not considered. In recent decades, as China has risen to become the world's second largest economy and a technological and military power, it has understandably been pressing to revise, but not overturn, the rules of the road.
Similarities to the period leading to WWI include tensions between rising and declining powers, complex alliance structures, intense nationalism with the attendant hatred of others, territorial disputes, arms races with new technologies, economic integration and competition, autocracies, and wild-card actors. Just as a nationalist's gunshots in remote Sarajevo triggered a global war, today an incident, accident, or miscalculation - for example, a collision of warships or war planes in the South China Sea or near Taiwan - could easily escalate to a major, potentially nuclear, war.
We urgently need to understand the seriousness of the moment and the imperative of pressing the Biden Administration to reject the containment policies that date to the 1990s, and which were escalated by Obama and Trump. Despite our differences, detente and Common Security diplomacy with China are essential.
Human security is also endangered as the two powers expand their military capabilities at a frightening pace, diverting funds from critical human needs to military purposes, and igniting a new nuclear arms race.
We share common interests with the Chinese people and government, despite our profound differences. Together we face the existential threats of climate change, current and future pandemics, and the dangers of nuclear cataclysm.
The New Cold War is fueled by a dynamic of seemingly irreconcilable assessments of U.S. and Chinese behavior. A formerly marginalized but now rising power is asserting its interests against those of a long dominant hegemon, leading each side to assert ostensibly legitimate reasons for actions that the other side considers threatening, resulting in spiraling tensions.
Human security is also endangered as the two powers expand their military capabilities at a frightening pace, diverting funds from critical human needs to military purposes, and igniting a new nuclear arms race.
The Pentagon's new strategic doctrine is its third major transition over the past 75 years. It comes after cold war containment of the Soviet Union and the futile war on terrorism. The U.S. military and related institutions are again preparing for great power war against China and/or Russia. The Pentagon has designated China as its peer competitor. Secretary of State and possible 2024 Republican presidential nominee Mike Pompeo named the Chinese Communist Party as an enemy, not an adversary, while Antony Blinken sees China as a rival against which the U.S. has to bolster its military alliance. The U.S. is pressuring other nations to reduce their ties with Beijing, and despite Trump's "American First" unilateralism and disruptive diplomacy has already be reinforcing alliances and military ties with nations surrounding China. Largely unnoticed in early December, what used to be the "Atlantic Alliance" launched "NATO 2030", which makes containing China NATO's new priority.
The New Cold War is unfolding on many fronts. Biden will continue the Obama and Trump campaigns to contain China militarily, technologically, and economically. Beijing is being surrounded with hundreds of U.S. military bases, alliances, and near-alliances along China's eastern, southern, and western peripheries - including Japan, Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines Australia, and India, reinforced by the omnicidal power of the U.S. Seventh Fleet. This system is being reinforced by increasing military collaborations by the QUAD, the not quite Asian NATO: the U.S., Japan, Australia, and India. Add to this deployments of offensive land- and sea-based intermediate range missiles opposite China's eastern coast.
One measure of the military imbalance is that the US has five aircraft carrier groups in Asia Pacific, while China has two, one a 40-year-old Ukrainian carrier and the other a Chinese built ship, a replica of the Ukrainian model.
Recalling the dawn of the nuclear age, we live in a time when arms races and pursuit of dominance are wed to scientific and technological breakthroughs. Vast U.S., Chinese, and Russian fortunes are being invested in the weaponization of artificial intelligence, robotic, cyber and hypersonic technologies, several of which may operate beyond human control. This race for technological military superiority is deepening the militarization of the societies of all three great powers, including mining their private sectors and universities for the technologies that can assure victory in a future war. Star Wars science fiction is becoming 21st-century reality.
As part of its containment campaign, the U.S. is blocking Chinese access to U.S. technologies. Most well-known is the global campaign against Huawei. But a growing number of Chinese scientists in the U.S. are being charged and deported as spies, which in turn fuels anti-Asian racism. Barriers are being raised against Chinese students studying in our colleges and universities, and visa restrictions are making it increasingly difficult for Chinese tourists to visit Disneyland.
China, of course, is no innocent. It has blocked its citizens' access to Facebook, Google, and other U.S. tech platforms, and its lack of respect for intellectual property rights and its history of industrial espionage are well known.
Because economic power serves as the foundation of political stability and military and technological capacities, the U.S. is working to "decouple" its economy from China, stifling Chinese exports to the U.S. with tariffs on Chinese goods that the Biden Administration is likely to continue. China has retaliated with high tariffs on some U.S. products.
At the very least, we need to work for demilitarization in contested regions, beginning with ending military provocations that could escalate beyond control. The U.S. has increased naval show-of-force operations in waters adjacent to China, especially in the East and South China Seas, in order to intimidate and humiliate China. The South China Sea, over which 40% of world trade and nearly all of the oil which fuels China's economy travels, has become the geopolitical center of the struggle for world power. Were the U.S. to blockade China and cut off its oil supplies, the Chinese economy would screech to a halt. Add to that, the U.S. Air-Sea Battle doctrine is designed to hold hostage China's economic and financial foundations, concentrated along its coastlines.
It is no wonder that China is engaged in a major military buildup, including its construction of military bases on islets in waters claimed by other nations, in violation of international law and a recent Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling.
The Pentagon recognizes that China's policy is strategic defense. Beijing is focused on its traditional strategic vulnerability: the threat coming from the sea, as it did during the murderous Opium Wars and Japan's 20th century invasions. Chinese industry is concentrated in Southeast and East China. Its navy faces the threat of being bottled up in the South China Sea, and there are those hundreds of US bases and the 7th fleet.
Even as the Pentagon warns of a rising Chinese military threat, Beijing is hardly on a par with the U.S. The Pentagon budget is three times that of China and Washington has twenty times more nuclear weapons than China. And the U.S. military as been continuously at war for the past four decades, making it battle hardened, while China has not been to war over the same period.
Although she was passed over as Joe Biden's Secretary of Defense, a statement by Michelle Flournoy reflects a key Pentagon goal: the ability to sink China's navy within 72 hours. That said, China's asymmetric warfare capabilities should not be underestimated. Its cyber and space warfare, and artificial intelligence capacities could prove able to offset the imbalance of power.
All of this has fueled China's massive military modernization and buildup since Bill Clinton sent two nuclear-capable aircraft carriers through the Taiwan Strait in 1996. It is also the source of China's unjustified claims of sovereignty over 80-90% of the South China Sea, its construction of military bases on rocks and islets in waters claimed by other Asian-Pacific nations, and its massive naval and related military buildup. But China's priority has been creating area-denial capabilities within the First Island Chain, not global military hegemony. This comes at the expense of Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia and other claimants to South China Sea waters.
As the Philippine scholar and political figure Walden Bello has repeatedly stated, this is the wrong solution to the very real challenge China faces. The solution lies in demilitarization of the region and intensified Chinese-ASEAN diplomacy.
The second major flashpoint is Taiwan, which since 1949 the Chinese government has seen as a renegade province. The situation has become more complicated with the development of a democratic society there since the 1980s and China's recent consolidation of control over Hong Kong, which undermines confidence in its ability to respect one-country two-systems reunification commitments in the future. As part of the Trump administration's ratcheting up of tensions with China, the U.S. has upgraded diplomatic and military ties with Taipei, increased its air and naval presence in the area, and committed to an additional $3.4 billion in arms sales to Taiwan, including potentially offensive weapons. In response, China has responded with increased military muscle-flexing in waters near Taiwan and in and around Taiwanese airspace. The dangers of an accident, incident, or miscalculation are thus very high and could lead to a catastrophic war.
In an era in which our society and the rest of humanity are confronted by pandemics, the climate emergency, massive unemployment, poverty, crumbling infrastructures and nuclear dangers, the pursuit of hegemony and preparations for catastrophic war are self-destructive and insane.
Pressing for peaceful resolution of U.S.-China tensions in ways that provide mutual benefit for both sides and other Asia-Pacific nations needs to become a peace movement priority. Peaceful alternatives are available and must be pursued. Among them: halting freedom of navigation provocations, encouraging ASEAN-Chinese negotiations, cancelling arms sales to Taiwan, and encouraging Taiwanese-Chinese negotiations. Equally important is insisting on changing U.S. national budget priorities. Real security lies in investing in public health, education, housing, and food for all. With the seas rising, our security and future health can be achieved only by investing in green energy and the infrastructure needed to protect our coastal cities.
Remarkably, we can even find a call from the U.S. Naval War College for the U.S. to meet China halfway. A host of new peace and anti-war formations have emerged to prevent and reverse the Cold War with China. Among them, look for statements and webinars in the coming months from the newly created Committee for a Sane U.S. China Policy and a more movement-oriented Asia-Pacific Working Group.
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The Collapse of Michele Flournoy's Hopes Shows What Can Happen When Progressives Put Up a Fight
Flournoy has a long record of arguing for military intervention and escalation, from Syria and Libya to Afghanistan and beyond. That she didn't get the top job at the Pentagon is a good thing.
Dec 07, 2020
Just a few weeks ago, super hawk Michele Flournoy was being touted as a virtual shoo-in to become Joe Biden's nominee for Secretary of Defense. But some progressives insisted on organizing to raise key questions, such as: Should we accept the revolving door that keeps spinning between the Pentagon and the weapons industry? Does an aggressive U.S. military really enhance "national security" and lead to peace?
By challenging Flournoy while posing those questions--and answering them in the negative--activism succeeded in changing "Defense Secretary Flournoy" from a fait accompli to a lost fantasy of the military-industrial complex.
She is "a favorite among many in the Democratic foreign-policy establishment," Foreign Policy magazine reported on Monday night, hours after news broke that Biden's nomination will go to Gen. Lloyd Austin instead of Flournoy. But "in recent weeks the Biden transition team has faced pushback from the left wing of the party. Progressive groups signaled opposition to Flournoy over her role in U.S. military interventions in Libya and the Middle East in prior government positions, as well as her ties to the defense industry once she left government."
Of course, Gen. Austin is a high-ranking part of the war machine. Yet, as Foreign Policy noted: "When Biden pushed to draw down troops from Iraq while vice president, Flournoy, then Pentagon policy chief, and then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen opposed the idea. Austin did not."
Video of war-crazed Sen. John McCain grilling Austin several years ago shows the general willing to stand firm against zeal to escalate killing in Syria, a clear contrast to positions that Flournoy had staked out.
Flournoy has a long record of arguing for military intervention and escalation, from Syria and Libya to Afghanistan and beyond. She has opposed a ban on weapons sales to Saudi Arabia. In recent years, her advocacy has included pushing military envelopes in potentially explosive hotspots like the South China Sea. Flournoy is vehemently in favor of long-term U.S. military encroachment on China.
Historian Andrew Bacevich, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy and former Army colonel, warns that "Flournoy's proposed military buildup will prove unaffordable, unless, of course, federal deficits in the multitrillion-dollar range become routine. But the real problem lies not with the fact that Flournoy's buildup will cost a lot, but that it is strategically defective." Bacevich adds: "Strip away the references to deterrence and Flournoy is proposing that the United States goad the People's Republic into a protracted high-tech arms race."
With a record like that, you might think that Flournoy would receive very little support from the leaders of organizations like the Ploughshares Fund, the Arms Control Association, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the Council for a Livable World. But, as I wrote more than a week ago, movers and shakers at those well-heeled groups eagerly praised Flournoy to the skies--publicly urging Biden to give her the Defense Secretary job.
Many said they knew Flournoy well and liked her. Some lauded her interest in restarting nuclear-arms negotiations with Russia (a standard foreign-policy position). Many praised her work in high-ranking Pentagon posts under Presidents Clinton and Obama. Privately, some could be heard saying how great it would be to have "access" to the person running the Pentagon.
More traditional allies of militaristic policymakers chimed in, often vilifying the left as it became clear in late November that progressive pushback was slowing Flournoy's momentum for the Defense Department's top job. Notorious war enthusiast Max Boot was a case in point.
Boot was evidently provoked by a Washington Postnews story that appeared on Nov. 30 under the headline "Liberal Groups Urge Biden Not to Name Flournoy as Secretary of Defense." The article quoted from a statement issued that day by five progressive organizations -- RootsAction.org (where I'm national director), CodePink, Our Revolution, Progressive Democrats of America, and World Beyond War. We conveyed that a Flournoy nomination would lead to a fierce grassroots battle over Senate confirmation. (The newspaper quoted me saying: "RootsAction.org has a 1.2 million active list of supporters in the U.S., and we're geared up for an all-out push for a 'no' vote, if it comes to that.")
Reporting on the joint statement, Common Dreams aptly summarized it in a headline: "Rejecting Michele Flournoy, Progressives Demand Biden Pick Pentagon Chief 'Untethered' From Military-Industrial Complex."
Such talk and such organizing are anathema to the likes of Boot, who fired back with a Post column within hours. While advocating for Flournoy, he invoked an "old Roman adage"--"Si vis pacem, para bellum"--"If you want peace, prepare for war." He neglected to mention that Latin is a dead language and the Roman Empire collapsed.
War preparations that increase the likelihood of war may excite laptop warriors. But the militarism they promote is madness nonetheless.
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Why Jeh Johnson Would Be a Better Defense Secretary Than Michele Flournoy
Flournoy has repeatedly demonstrated throughout her career, both in her official Pentagon positions in the Clinton and Obama administrations and in her published writings and statements, that she actually believes in the normalization of war.
Dec 06, 2020
President-elect Biden's choice for Secretary of Defense has turned out to be one of the most controversial and difficult of his Cabinet appointments. The early front-runner, Michele Flournoy, was originally seen as a shoo-in and was touted as a great breakthrough for women, but her hawkish views have provoked serious concerns. Biden now appears to be also considering two Black Americans promoted by the Congressional Black Caucus: Jeh Johnson and retired General Lloyd Austin.
All three are flawed candidates to anyone who wants to see an end to the endless wars and to stop the revolving door between the Pentagon and military contractors. They all sit on boards of companies that profit from militarism--Johnson at Lockheed Martin, Austin at Raytheon and Flournoy at Booz, Allen, Hamilton. All have supported most or all post-9/11 U.S. military interventions. None would be our preference.
But Biden is not going to appoint someone truly committed to peace and disarmament, like Congresswoman Barbara Lee or retired Colonel Ann Wright, a senior diplomat who resigned from the State Department to protest the Iraq War.
So who is the "least worst" choice? While General Austin has some good qualities--his experience in overseeing major troop withdrawals from Iraq and his opposition to further U.S. involvement in Syria--appointing a recently retired military officer would violate long-standing traditions and laws that stipulate that the Secretary of Defense must be a civilian.
The Republican-controlled Senate set a dangerous precedent when it approved a waiver of the National Security Act and confirmed General Mattis as Trump's Defense Secretary in 2017. As Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, the Chair of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Military Personnel, said at that time, "Civilian control of our military is a fundamental principle of American democracy, and I will not vote for an exception to this rule." We agree.
That leaves Flournoy and Johnson. We are afraid that Flournoy would be an especially dangerous choice for America and the world. Given the additional time that President-elect Biden is taking over this decision, he, too, seems to have reservations about her.
As Under Secretary of Defense for Policy during Obama's first term, Flournoy clearly did not see eye-to-eye with Vice President Biden on many of the Obama administration's most fateful decisions. Biden opposed military escalation in Afghanistan, while Flournoy supported it. Flournoy also backed military intervention and regime change in Libya, while Biden insists that he argued strongly against it.
Flournoy has held a head-spinning number of revolving door positions--her board seat at Booz, Allen Hamilton, co-founding WestExec Advisors, the Center for a New American Security, and advising the private equity firm Pine Island Capital that is heavily invested in military industries, and other compromising jobs.
Even more problematic, however, is that Flournoy has repeatedly demonstrated throughout her career, both in her official Pentagon positions in the Clinton and Obama administrations and in her published writings and statements, that she actually believes in the normalization of war.
She was the main author of the Clinton administration's 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), which politically justified the unilateral use of U.S. military force all over the world. For Flournoy, normalizing war was just a matter of making a persuasive political case for the widespread use of military force, by defining things like "preventing the emergence of a hostile regional coalition" and "ensuring uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies and strategic resources" as "U.S. vital interests" that justified the use of force.
In every U.S. dispute with other countries since the 1997 Defense Review, she has supported exactly the kind of threats and uses of force that she set out to ideologically legitimize in the QDR, from invading Iraq to attacking Libya to militarily confronting China to fighting "hybrid" wars--a mix of conventional war, insurgencies and cyber threats. "In the future," she blithely says, "warfare may come in a lot of different flavors."
So what about Jeh Johnson? From 2009 to 2012, under Obama, he served as General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Defense, where he was the senior legal official signing off on air strikes, drone strikes and other U.S. uses of force around the world. Johnson wrote the still secret legal memos that justified the targeted killing of people overseas by drones--a program that has killed many innocent civilians.
Legal experts were highly critical of both Obama's policy and Johnson's defense of it. We at CODEPINK repeatedly protested against Johnson, including projecting images of drone victims on his elegant home in Washington, D.C. We also opposed many of his policies as Secretary of Homeland Security in Obama's second term.
But there are indications that Johnson would be more inclined toward restraint in the threat and use of force, reliance on peaceful diplomacy and compliance with U.S. and international law than Flournoy.
While Flournoy supported the 2011 US/NATO bombardment of Libya, Johnson did not. He advised Obama that the bombing constituted "hostilities" under the War Powers Act and must be ended by May 20, 2011. Tragically, Obama chose to ignore that advice from his top military lawyer and what Biden says were strong arguments against that war from his Vice President.
Johnson has also been quite unique among U.S. officials who have served the U.S. post-9/11 war machine in calling for the demilitarization of U.S. anti-terrorism policies and questioning the normalization of war that Flournoy worked to legitimize.
In 2012, while still at the Pentagon, Johnson made two ground-breaking speeches, one to the American Enterprise Institute and one to the Oxford Union debating society in the U.K., in which he discussed ending the U.S.'s militarized terrorism policy and once again treating terrorism as a crime to be dealt with by civilian law enforcement. He went on to say this:
"War must be regarded as a finite, extraordinary and unnatural state of affairs. War permits one man - if he is a 'privileged belligerent,' consistent with the laws of war -- to kill another. War violates the natural order of things, in which children bury their parents; in war parents bury their children. In its 12th year, we must not accept the current conflict, and all that it entails, as the 'new normal.' Peace must be regarded as the norm toward which the human race continually strives."
Johnson went on to explain that, like Martin Luther King, Jr., he graduated from Morehouse College in Atlanta. "I am a student and disciple of Dr. King," he said, "though I became an imperfect one the first time I gave legal approval for the use of military force."
For Johnson, war cannot be the "new normal," and no clever political arguments can make it so. His actions at the Pentagon appear to weigh on his conscience and conflict with his moral compass. Whatever the political or legal justification, war is still a "finite, extraordinary and unnatural state of affairs."
Johnson's views echo what former President Jimmy Carter said when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, "War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children."
If, as reported, President Biden is trying to choose between Michele Flournoy, General Austin and Jeh Johnson for Secretary of Defense, we urge him to choose the one out of the three who has upheld this basic principle that most Americans believe in, that war is "extraordinary and unnatural," and peace is "the norm toward which the human race continually strives."
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