Ethan Indigo Smith, Contributor
Waking Times

“Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.” ~ Pericles

Everything is ultimately political these days, but everything is firstly biological. Yet, ignoring our biology and our humanity, the military-industrial complex, with all its toxic modalities, still claims to operate in our best interests.

The fact is, modern politics has become the imposition of institutional formality where individuals and truth once were. Increasingly favoring institutional privilege over individual rights, politicians on all sides of the game act to reinforce and advance the standing of corporations at the expense of our physical world. They embark on resource wars for profit, destroy our environment for energy, construe zealotry as patriotism, and steer a culture of social competition – not cooperation – all the while hiding behind veils of secrecy and meaningless rhetoric.

It does not matter what caste you were born into, whether you are wealthy or poor, victor or victim of the system; as far as the big picture goes, we live in a world where commerce, politics and war are dominant and inseparable forces. The outcome of this dangerous combination affects everyone and everything. So, whether we feel comfortable or constrained within the current paradigm, we are still ultimately at its mercy. And whether you care to stay informed or not, ignorance doesn’t alleviate you, or our ailing planet, of its burdens.

The Nuclear Energy and Armament Experiments

One of the largest tentacles of the military-industrial complex is the nuclear experimentation facet of their operations. These operations include both energy and armament — programs which are inextricably linked, as I will demonstrate – with negative impacts on all life on earth and, and when disaster strikes, capable of negating life altogether.

Maintaining a deafening silence over the ongoing Fukushima disaster, for example, the world’s political heads show zero regard for our biological wellbeing (much less our social wellbeing) in both the formulation and the execution of policy. Instead of shutting down the deadly reactors at Fukushima, the world’s powers simply shut down any information about the situation.

For example, the Japanese government passed a law through Parliament, called the “States Secret Act” following the 2011 Fukushima meltdown. Under this act, both officials and private citizens who leak “special state secrets” (ie. details of the disaster) face prison terms of up to 10 years, while journalists who publish classified information (ie. all relevant information) face up to five years. [1] Meanwhile, in 2011 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s response to increases in detected radiation levels within the United States was to reduce the use of radiation monitoring while at the same time, raising the official allowable levels of radiation in food, water and soil. [2] Of course, this was not reported by mainstream media.

Nor was the 2014 partial shutdown of the Florida Power & Light’s Turkey Point facility in the Miami area, following a steam leak that resulted from the failure of the archaic facility’s cooling system. [3] While mainstream news completely blocked coverage of this potential meltdown situation, the facility remained in operation not because it managed to rectify the cooling problem, but because the corporation lobbied for special permission to violate allowable water temperature safety thresholds from the previous limit of 100’F limit up to 103’F. [4]

The simple reason for the secrecy and suppression of information is that the nuclear experimentation industry is just that — an experiment. Although it is touted as a ‘clean’ technology, the nuclear industry has no mechanism for disposing of the radioactive waste it generates, and no viable plan for such a mechanism in the future. All it has is a plan to contain the mounting radioactive waste it generates each day and store it for the million years it takes for radioactive waste to break down naturally.

So, whether nor not we accept or reject the philosophies of government, it is an inarguable fact that our biology, and that of our grandchildren’s grandchildren’s grandchildren — is at the complete mercy of those individuals who, hiding behind political formality, have their fingers “on the button”. And, for as long as their priorities are clearly shaped by the objectives of the corporate-military-industrial complex, there is very little mercy involved. Instead our collective future and the future of our planet is heavily influenced by corporate profitability and contrived political hemispheres which, with the support of corporate media, teeter between deliberately limited polarities, never really making progress or improvement or exploring possibilities — such as peaceful solutions, or sustainable energy investment — beyond those which may profit those already in power.

It was once theorized by power-brokers that nuclear power plants would deter any major revolution from taking place, because it would be too dangerous to jeopardize a nuclear power plants’ operations. This idea is similar to the political schematic that the whole world has lived under for decades; that of Mutually Assured Destruction – or the aptly shortened M.A.D., which assumes the only counter-balance that prevents nuclear war is the threat of nuclear war itself.

However the revolution in the former U.S.S.R. changed the understanding that nuclear experiments would deter revolution — but was it a real revolution? How much can actually change within a nuclear society still bound by the confines of the military-industrial complex? Dare I say, besides some reshuffling of deck chairs, there really was no significant deviation that occurred. Both outside influences and inside conditions ensured the outcome remained within the confines of the existing complex — nuclear reactors and all. Revolution cannot occur when nuclear military industrial complex is integrated.

The rise of the military industrial complex changed the whole dynamic of war and peace, and in the process, steered our society from exploring sustainable energy solutions toward the constant danger of nuclear meltdown. Nuclear power generation is inherently risky of itself; both the waste it stores and the pollution it releases pose a largely unseen but no less dangerous threat to our Earth Mother, and to our biology. But it also creates obvious military strike targets for enemy nations which, if detonated, can destroy entire nations in one sweep. Building nuclear power experiments is akin to building a self-destruct button into your nation’s infrastructure; one false move, be it intentional (military) or accidental (like Fukushima), and it destroys the landscape and all who dwell on and around it for an eternity, with no known remedy.

And yet, nuclear experimentation will continue to be a threat as long as we allow corporate interests and corrupt governments to violate our human rights and natural laws, taking away individual freedoms in the name of peace, and risking our biology with these dangerous experiments. As long as we live in a war-world, where military and nuclear programs are a major part of our national and global economic and political structures, any revolution other than complete systemic reform — systemic peace and sustainability — is no revolution at all. Until war and dirty energy cease to be incentivized and by our political and economic structures, anything else is just the same game with a new name.

The Unseen Military Influence

Did you know that the internet was first developed in the 1950s to provide the military a “survivable network” through which to communicate after a global nuclear confrontation. [3] Yes, the internet is a military invention, spawned directly from the nuclear experimentation era and its inherent horrors. Similarly, The experiments that led to the development of the atomic bomb and to the development of nuclear energy were one and the same; is it any surprise, then, that (with the exception of Japan) the nations with the largest investment in nuclear energy generation are also those most heavily armed with nuclear weapons? [5] [6]

Indirectly and directly, we are all under the thumb of institutions and conventions of war. Basically, if it doesn’t benefit the military industrial complex, it simply doesn’t get developed. And this predicament reaches back for millennia. While the antiquated mode of operation of the world’s imperialists continues, all that has changed in the nuclear experimentation era is the technology.

Although we would like to believe otherwise, humanity seems unable or unwilling to consider the unseen — whether it is truths hidden by political secrecy, whether it is extra-sensory/paranormal phenomena, or whether it is a nano-sized poison. But we can no longer obfuscate the unseen threat of nuclear armageddon and the invisible nuclear radiation that is already poisoning our world. Make no mistake — the toxic fallout from failing nuclear experiments (such as Fukushima) and the proliferation of nuclear weapons experiments both pose a direct threat to our existence, no matter your desert isle locale or your mostly peaceful region of a mostly peaceful nation.

The U.S. Doctrine of Perpetual War

One of the best ways to gain and maintain power is to keep the people in constant fear — in fear of wars, of outsiders, and more recently, of “terrorism”. Maintaining a culture of war-minded fear ensures the public consent to the constant funding of the military-industrial-complex, under the guise of security and protection.

If we look at the history of the Presidents of the United States since the end of the Second World War, we see that each administration invented a presidential Doctrine directly pertaining to war – either inviting involvement in or directly inciting conflict.

Formerly a WWI artillery officer, President Harry S. Truman was the first U.S. president to initiate a foreign policy of intervention in relation to conflicts not related to the United States.According to the U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian [7], the Truman Doctrine of 1947…

“… established that the United States would provide political, military and economic assistance to all democratic nations under threat from external or internal authoritarian forces. The Truman Doctrine effectively reoriented U.S. foreign policy, away from its usual stance of withdrawal from regional conflicts not directly involving the United States, to one of possible intervention in far away conflicts.”

The Truman Doctrine became the foundation of American foreign policy and led to the 1949 formation of the full-fledged military alliance NATO. Historians often credit Truman’s speech to date the start of the Cold War, with tensions with the Soviet Union increasing dramatically under his presidency.

Notably, Truman was the first U.S. president to date to initiate nuclear strikes on another nation, approving the use of atomic weapons against Japan — the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. [8]

Although history remembers President John F. Kennedy as a peacemaker, The Kennedy Doctrine added fuel to the Cold War by calling “for military strength and unison in the struggle against communism” and public support for “a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.” [9] The first signs of the prevailing “war on everything” mentality in U.S. politics, Kennedy’s foreign policy also pushed the notion that, because the United States had the military and political power to control events in the international system, they should. “In the long history of the world only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom from its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility – I welcome it.”  This interventionist, us-versus-them mentality of the Kennedy Doctrine dominated the Kennedy administration, and the escalation of the Cold War is a cornerstone of his presidential legacy.

The Eisenhower doctrine of 1957, while not a declaration of war, directly promoted nations to invite the U.S. to war. [10] Following the Suez conflict and the resulting loss of global prestige of U.S. allies Great Britain, France and Israel, President Dwight D. Eisenhower believed that a power vacuum had formed in the Middle East and invited other nations to request American economic assistance and/or aid from U.S. military forces if it was being threatened by another state. As a result, Eisenhower sent U.S. troops into Lebanon, to defend the Lebanese republic against a perceived threat from the (then) USSR. This intervention established the culture in the modern U.S. psyche of paternalistic intervention in off-shore conflicts of other nations, which still prevails today. Not surprisingly, Eisenhower came to office as a hardened military man, bringing a war-mentality to the highest office of U.S. government. A five-star general in the United States Army during World War II, he served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe before being appointed the first Supreme Commander of NATO in 1951. [11]

Through The Nixon Doctrine of 1969, President Richard Nixon opened the floodgates of U.S. military aid to allies in the Persian Gulf, and helped set the stage for the Carter Doctrine which, in 1980, stated point-blank that the United States would use military force to defend its interests in the Persian Gulf region. This created the political culture in the United States for the subsequent direct military involvement by the U.S. in the Gulf War and the Iraq War.

Similarly, the Reagan Doctrine of the Cold War era outlined the strategy of the United States to directly oppose the influence of the Soviet Union in global matters. Whatever the Soviet influence, President Ronald Reagan vowed to oppose it, and this policy remained a centerpiece of American foreign policy until the early 1990s.

President George H.W. Bush was the last veteran of World War II (a torpedo bomber pilot) to serve as president and, once again, brought an increasing war-mentality to the U.S. Presidency. Toward the end of the Cold War, Iraq invaded its oil-rich neighbor Kuwait. Authorized by the U.N. Security Council, of which the United States is a permanent member, the United States organized a coalition of its NATO allies and other nations which, led mainly by U.S. troops, pushed Iraq out of Kuwait. [12] When the Gulf War ended, President Bush instituted a policy of containment, and stationed U.S. military forces in neighboring countries. However, in 1992, Department of Defense officials working under President George H.W. Bush proposed a new U.S. military and political strategy; concluding that containment and deterrence had become obsolete, the new policy proposing the use of pre-emptive strikes as a means of “self-defense”, and of unilateral action against perceived threats to U.S. security. Although controversy surrounded the notions of pre-emptive and unilateral strikes, and they were subsequently removed from Bush’s official policy [13], both points formed the centerpiece of foreign policy (big surprise) adopted by his son, George W. Bush upon entering office in 2000.

The Clinton Doctrine of President William (Bill) J. Clinton was used to justify U.S. involvement in the Yugoslav Wars (1991 – 2001). Clinton subsequently involved the U.S. in the Bosnian War, justifying U.S. involvement on plausible humanitarian grounds; however privately, as revealed by The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President, President Clinton’s involvement in Bosnia was not a humanitarian mission, rather a direct result of objections to an independent Bosnia, which would have been “unnatural” as only Muslim nation in Europe.[14] During his presidency, Clinton also presided over the 1995 NATO bombing campaign in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Operation Deliberate Force) [15], the 1998 ‘Operation Desert Fox’ bombings of Iraq (authorized by the deceptively title Iraq Liberation Act) [16], the 1999 bombings of Yugoslavia [17], and the retaliatory 1998 bombings of Afghanistan and Sudan (Operation Infinite Reach) [18]. In additional to direct strikes undertaken on behalf of other nations, President Clinton also maintained a staunch policy of containment throughout his presidency, lining the borders of enemy nations (which were dramatically increasing in number) with U.S. military bases.

However, the most famously barbarous doctrine was the Bush Doctrine, in which President George W. Bush Jr. essentially declared that the United States was adopting a shoot-first-ask-questions-later policy pertaining to perceived terrorist activities, both in other countries and at home. [19]  Advocates the illogical notion of “preventive war”, the Bush Doctrine is based on the faulty reasoning that attacking a potential threat before it attacks the United States is the only way to ensure peace and security, rather than — as history has proven — the most effective way to ensure more wars and security threats.

The fact is, the United States has been at war for 222 years out of the last 239 years. That’s 93% of the time! Since the Declaration of Independence was written in 1776, the U.S. has actually been at peace (albeit planning for further wars) for a total of only 21 years. [20] Not one U.S. president actually qualifies as a solely peacetime president, and the only time the United States lasted five years without going to war was between 1935 and 1940 — during the period of the Great Depression.

Let that sink in for a minute…

Since U.S. involvement in World War II began in 1940, most of the world’s military operations have been initiated by the U.S., [6] and U.S. military spending today exceeds the rest of the world’s military spending combined. [21]  In addition, the U.S. also supplies in excess of $3 billion each year (over $10 million per day!) in military aid to Israel, funding the continued war in Palestine.[22]

The intertwining of the U.S. economy with the nuclear experimentation complex was eloquently described by Christopher J. Tassava from the Economic History Association [23]: