Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy

Failed

States

The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy

Noam Chomsky

© 2006 Chomsky Grandchildren Trust FBO Alexander Apel

Originally published by Metropolitan Books in 2006.

Published in 2024 by

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Cover image: People walk through high water in front of the Superdome on August 30, 2005, in New Orleans, Louisiana (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

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Printed in the United States.

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Contents

Preface

1. Stark, Dreadful, Inescapable

2. Outlaw States

3. Illegal but Legitimate

4. Democracy Promotion Abroad

5. Supporting Evidence: The Middle East

6. Democracy Promotion at Home

Afterword

Notes

Index

Preface

The selection of issues that should rank high on the agenda of concern for human welfare and rights is, naturally, a subjective matter. But there are a few choices that seem unavoidable, because they bear so directly on the prospects for decent survival. Among them are at least these three: nuclear war, environmental disaster, and the fact that the government of the world’s leading power is acting in ways that increase the likelihood of these catastrophes. It is important to stress the government, because the population, not surprisingly, does not agree. That brings up a fourth issue that should deeply concern Americans, and the world: the sharp divide between public opinion and public policy, one of the reasons for the fear, which cannot casually be put aside, that the American ‘system’ as a whole is in real trouble—that it is heading in a direction that spells the end of its historic values [of] equality, liberty, and meaningful democracy.¹

The system is coming to have some of the features of failed states, to adopt a currently fashionable notion that is conventionally applied to states regarded as potential threats to our security (like Iraq) or as needing our intervention to rescue the population from severe internal threats (like Haiti). Though the concept is recognized to be frustratingly imprecise, some of the primary characteristics of failed states can be identified. One is their inability or unwillingness to protect their citizens from violence and perhaps even destruction. Another is their tendency to regard themselves as beyond the reach of domestic or international law, and hence free to carry out aggression and violence. And if they have democratic forms, they suffer from a serious democratic deficit that deprives their formal democratic institutions of real substance.²

Among the hardest tasks that anyone can undertake, and one of the most important, is to look honestly in the mirror. If we allow ourselves to do so, we should have little difficulty in finding the characteristics of failed states right at home. That recognition of reality should be deeply troubling to those who care about their countries and future generations. Countries, plural, because of the enormous reach of US power, but also because the threats are not localized in space or time.

The first half of this book is devoted mostly to the increasing threat of destruction caused by US state power, in violation of international law, a topic of particular concern for citizens of the world dominant power, however one assesses the relevant threats. The second half is concerned primarily with democratic institutions, how they are conceived in the elite culture and how they perform in reality, both in promoting democracy abroad and shaping it at home.

The issues are closely interlinked, and arise in several contexts. In discussing them, to save excessive footnoting I will omit sources when they can easily be found in recent books of mine.³

Chapter 1

Stark, Dreadful, Inescapable

Half a century ago, in July 1955, Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein issued an extraordinary appeal to the people of the world, asking them to set aside the strong feelings they have about many issues and to consider themselves only as members of a biological species which has had a remarkable history, and whose disappearance none of us can desire. The choice facing the world is stark and dreadful and inescapable: shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?¹

The world has not renounced war. Quite the contrary. By now, the world’s hegemonic power accords itself the right to wage war at will, under a doctrine of anticipatory self-defense with unstated bounds. International law, treaties, and rules of world order are sternly imposed on others with much self-righteous posturing, but dismissed as irrelevant for the United States—a long-standing practice, driven to new depths by the Reagan and Bush II administrations.²

Among the most elementary of moral truisms is the principle of universality: we must apply to ourselves the same standards we do to others, if not more stringent ones. It is a remarkable comment on Western intellectual culture that this principle is so often ignored and, if occasionally mentioned, condemned as outrageous. This is particularly shameful on the part of those who flaunt their Christian piety, and therefore have presumably at least heard of the definition of the hypocrite in the Gospels.³

Relying solely on elevated rhetoric, commentators urge us to appreciate the sincerity of the professions of moral clarity and idealism by the political leadership. To take just one of innumerable examples, the well-known scholar Philip Zelikow deduces the new centrality of moral principles in the Bush administration from the administration’s rhetoric and a single fact: the proposal to increase development aid—to a fraction of that provided by other rich countries relative to the size of their economies.⁴

The rhetoric is indeed impressive. I carry this commitment in my soul, the president declared in March 2002 as he created the Millennium Challenge Corporation to boost funding to combat poverty in the developing world. In 2005, the corporation erased the statement from its website after the Bush administration reduced its projected budget by billions of dollars. Its head resigned after failing to get the program moving, economist Jeffrey Sachs writes, having disbursed almost nothing of the $10 billion originally promised. Meanwhile, Bush rejected a call from Prime Minister Tony Blair to double aid to Africa, and expressed willingness to join other industrial countries in cutting unpayable African debt only if aid was correspondingly reduced, moves that amount to a death sentence for more than 6 million Africans a year who die of preventable and treatable causes, Sachs notes. When Bush’s new ambassador, John Bolton, arrived at the United Nations shortly before its 2005 summit, he at once demanded the elimination of all occurrences of the phrase ‘millennium development goals’ from the document that had been carefully prepared after long negotiations to deal with poverty, sexual discrimination, hunger, primary education, child mortality, maternal health, the environment and disease.⁵

Rhetoric is always uplifting, and we are enjoined to admire the sincerity of those who produce it, even when they act in ways that recall Alexis de Tocqueville’s observation that the United States was able to exterminate the Indian race … without violating a single great principle of morality in the eyes of the world.⁶

Reigning doctrines are often called a double standard. The term is misleading. It is more accurate to describe them as a single standard, clear and unmistakable, the standard that Adam Smith called the vile maxim of the masters of mankind: … All for ourselves, and nothing for other people. Much has changed since his day, but the vile maxim flourishes.⁷

The single standard is so deeply entrenched that it is beyond awareness. Take terror, the leading topic of the day. There is a straightforward single standard: their terror against us and our clients is the ultimate evil, while our terror against them does not exist—or, if it does, is entirely appropriate. One clear illustration is Washington’s terrorist war against Nicaragua in the 1980s, an uncontroversial case, at least for those who believe that the International Court of Justice and the UN Security Council—both of which condemned the United States—have some standing on such matters. The State Department confirmed that the US-run forces attacking Nicaragua from US bases in Honduras had been authorized to attack soft targets, that is, undefended civilian targets. A protest by Americas Watch elicited a sharp response by a respected spokesman of the left, New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, who patiently explained that terrorist attacks on civilian targets should be evaluated on pragmatic grounds: a sensible policy [should] meet the test of cost-benefit analysis of the amount of blood and misery that will be poured in, and the likelihood that democracy will emerge at the other end—democracy as defined by US elites, of course.⁸

The assumptions remain beyond challenge, even perception. In 2005, the press reported that the Bush administration was facing a serious dilemma: Venezuela was seeking extradition of one of the most notorious Latin American terrorists, Luis Posada Carriles, to face charges for the bombing of a Cubana airliner, killing seventy-three people. The charges were credible, but there was a real difficulty. After Posada escaped from a Venezuelan prison, he was hired by US covert operatives to direct the resupply operation for the Nicaraguan contras from El Salvador—that is, to play a prominent role in Washington’s terrorist war against Nicaragua. Hence the dilemma: Extraditing him for trial could send a worrisome signal to covert foreign agents that they cannot count on unconditional protection from the US government, and it could expose the CIA to embarrassing public disclosures from a former operative. A virtual entry requirement for the society of respectable intellectuals is the failure to perceive that there might be some slight problem here.⁹

At the same time that Venezuela was pressing its appeal, overwhelming majorities in the Senate and House passed a bill barring US aid to countries that refuse requests for extradition—US requests, that is. Washington’s regular refusal to honor requests from other countries seeking extradition of leading terrorists passed without comment, though some concern was voiced over the possibility that the bill theoretically might bar aid to Israel because of its refusal to extradite a man charged with a brutal 1997 murder in Maryland who had fled to Israel and claimed citizenship through his father.¹⁰

At least temporarily, the Posada dilemma was, thankfully, resolved by the courts, which rejected Venezuela’s appeal, in violation of a US-Venezuelan extradition treaty. A day later, the head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, urged Europe to speed US demands for extradition: We are always looking to see how we can make the extradition process go faster, he said. We think we owe it to the victims of terrorism to see to it that justice is done efficiently and effectively. At the Ibero-American Summit shortly after, the leaders of Spain and the Latin American countries backed Venezuela’s efforts to have [Posada] extradited from the United States to face trial for the Cubana airliner bombing, but then backed down, after the US embassy protested the action. Washington not only rejects, or merely ignores, extradition requests for terrorists. It also uses the tool of presidential pardons for acceptable crimes. Bush I pardoned Orlando Bosch, a notorious international terrorist and associate of Posada, despite objections by the Justice Department, which urged that he be deported as a threat to national security. Bosch resides safely in the United States, perhaps to be joined by Posada, in communities that continue to serve as the base for international terrorism.¹¹

No one would be so vulgar as to suggest that the United States should be subject to bombing and invasion in accord with the Bush II doctrine that those who harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves, announced when the government in Afghanistan asked for evidence before handing over people the United States accused of terrorism (without credible grounds, as Robert Mueller later acknowledged). The Bush doctrine has already become a de facto rule of international relations, writes Harvard international relations specialist Graham Allison: it revokes the sovereignty of states that provide sanctuary to terrorists. Some states, that is, thanks to the exemption provided by the single standard.¹²

The single standard also extends to weapons and other means of destruction. US military expenditures approximate those of the rest of the world combined, while arms sales by thirty-eight North American companies (one of which is based in Canada) account for more than 60 percent of the world total. Furthermore, for the world dominant power, the means of destruction have few limits. Articulating what those who wish to see already knew, the prominent Israeli military analyst Reuven Pedatzur writes that in the era of a single, ruthless superpower, whose leadership intends to shape the world according to its own forceful world view, nuclear weapons have become an attractive instrument for waging wars, even against enemies that do not possess nuclear arms.¹³

When asked why should the United States spend massively on arms and China refrain? Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, provided a simple answer: we guarantee the security of the world, protect our allies, keep critical sea-lanes open and lead the war on terror, while China threatens others and could ignite an arms race—actions inconceivable for the United States. Surely no one but a crazed conspiracy theorist might mention that the United States controls sea-lanes in pursuit of US foreign policy objectives, hardly for the benefit of all, or that much of the world regards Washington (particularly since the beginning of the Bush II presidency) as the leading threat to world security. Recent global polls reveal that France is most widely seen as having a positive influence in the world, alongside Europe generally and China, while the countries most widely viewed as having a negative influence are the US and Russia. But again there is a simple explanation. The polls just show that the world is wrong. It’s easy to understand why. As Boot has explained elsewhere, Europe has often been driven by avarice and the cynical Europeans cannot comprehend the strain of idealism that animates US foreign policy. After 200 years, Europe still hasn’t figured out what makes America tick. Others share these mental failings, notably those close by, who have considerable experience and therefore are particularly misguided. Of the countries polled, Mexico is among those most negative about the US role in the world.¹⁴

The course and outcome of a May 2005 review of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to which we will return, illustrates the gravity of our responsibility for the persistence—and enhancement—of severe threats to our endangered species. A leading concern of participants in the NPT conference was Washington’s intent to remove the nuclear brakes, thereby taking a big—and dangerous—step that will lead to the transformation of the nuclear bomb into a legitimate weapon for waging war. The potential consequences could not be more stark.¹⁵

RISKING ULTIMATE DOOM

The risk of nuclear destruction highlighted by Russell and Einstein is not abstract. We have already come close to the brink of nuclear war. The best-known case is the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, when our escape from nuclear oblivion was nothing short of miraculous, two prominent researchers conclude. At a retrospective conference in Havana in 2002, historian and Kennedy adviser Arthur Schlesinger described the crisis as the most dangerous moment in human history. Participants at the conference learned that the dangers were even more severe than they had believed. They discovered that the world was one word away from the first use of a nuclear weapon since Nagasaki, as reported by Thomas Blanton of the National Security Archive, which helped organize the conference. He was referring to the intervention of a Russian submarine commander, Vasily Arkhipov, who countermanded an order to fire nuclear-armed torpedoes when his vessels were under attack by US destroyers, with consequences that could have been dreadful.¹⁶

Among the high-level planners who attended the Havana retrospective was Kennedy’s defense secretary, Robert McNamara, who recalled in 2005 that the world had come within a hair’s breadth of nuclear disaster during the missile crisis. He accompanied this reminder with a renewed warning of apocalypse soon, describing current US nuclear weapons policy as immoral, illegal, militarily unnecessary, and dreadfully dangerous. This policy creates unacceptable risks to other nations and to our own (both the risk of accidental or inadvertent nuclear launch, which is unacceptably high, and of nuclear attack by terrorists). McNamara endorsed the judgment of Clinton’s defense secretary William Perry that there is a greater than 50 percent probability of a nuclear strike on US targets within a decade.¹⁷

Graham Allison reports that the consensus in the national security community is that a dirty bomb attack is inevitable, while an attack with a nuclear weapon is highly likely if fissionable materials—the essential ingredient—are not retrieved and secured. Reviewing the partial success of efforts to do so since the early 1990s, under the initiatives of Senators Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar, Allison describes the setback to these programs from the first days of the Bush administration. Bush planners put to the side the programs to avert inevitable nuclear terror, as they devoted their energies to driving the country to war and then to efforts to contain somehow the catastrophe they created in Iraq.¹⁸

In the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, not given to hyperbole, strategic analysts John Steinbruner and Nancy Gallagher warn that the Bush administration’s military programs and its aggressive stance carry an appreciable risk of ultimate doom. The reasons are straightforward. Pursuit of total security by one state, including the right to wage war at will and to remove the nuclear brakes (Pedatzur), entails the insecurity of others, who are likely to react. The terrifying technology now being developed in Rumsfeld’s transformation of the military will assuredly diffuse to the rest of the world. In the context of competition in intimidation, the action-reaction cycle creates a rising danger, potentially an unmanageable one. If the United States political system cannot recognize that risk and cannot confront the implications, they warn, its viability will be very much in question.¹⁹

Steinbruner and Gallagher express hope that the threat the US government is posing to its own population and the world will be countered by a coalition of peace-loving nations—led by China! We have come to a pretty pass when such thoughts are expressed at the heart of the establishment. And what that implies about the state of American democracy—where the issues scarcely even enter the electoral arena or public discussion—is no less shocking and threatening, illustrating the democratic deficit mentioned in the preface. Steinbruner and Gallagher bring up China because of all the nuclear states it has maintained by far the most restrained pattern of military deployment. Furthermore, China has led efforts in the United Nations to preserve outer space for peaceful purposes, in conflict with the United States, which, along with Israel, has barred all moves to prevent an arms race in space.

The militarization of space did not originate in the Bush administration. Clinton’s Space Command called for dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect US interests and investment, much in the way armies and navies did in earlier years. The United States must therefore develop space-based strike weapons [enabling] the application of precision force from, to, and through space. Such forces will be needed, US intelligence and the Space Command agreed, because globalization of the world economy will lead to a widening economic divide and deepening economic stagnation, political instability, and cultural alienation, thus provoking unrest and violence among the have-nots, much of it directed against the United States. The space program fell within the framework of the officially announced Clinton doctrine that the United States is entitled to resort to unilateral use of military power to ensure uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies, and strategic resources.²⁰

Clinton planners (STRATCOM) advised further that Washington should portray itself as irrational and vindictive if its vital interests are attacked, including the threat of first strike with nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states. Nuclear weapons are far more valuable than other weapons of mass destruction, STRATCOM noted, because the extreme destruction from a nuclear explosion is immediate, with few if any palliatives to reduce its effect. Furthermore, nuclear weapons always cast a shadow over any crisis or conflict, extending the reach of conventional power. Again, the strategic doctrine is not new. For example, Carter’s defense secretary Harold Brown called on Congress to fund strategic nuclear capabilities because with them, our other forces become meaningful instruments of military and political power, which must be available everywhere in the Third World because, largely for economic reasons, there is increased turbulence from within as well as intervention from the Soviet Union—the latter more a pretext than a reason, a fact sometimes frankly recognized.²¹

Under the Bush administration, the threats have become even more serious. Bush planners extended Clinton’s doctrine of control of space for military purposes to ownership of space, which may mean instant engagement anywhere in the world. Top military commanders informed Congress in 2005 that the Pentagon is developing new space weaponry that would allow the United States to launch an attack very quickly, with very short time lines on the planning and delivery, any place on the face of the earth, General James Cartwright, head of the Strategic Command, explained. The policy subjects every part of the globe to the risk of instant destruction, thanks to sophisticated global surveillance and lethal offensive weaponry in space—reciprocally endangering the people of the United States.²²

The Bush administration has also broadened the first-strike option, and has increasingly blurred the line between conventional and nuclear weapons, thus heightening the risk that the nuclear option will be used, military analyst William Arkin observes. Weapons systems now under development could deliver a conventional payload precisely on target within minutes of a valid command and control release order, conforming to an air force doctrine that defines space superiority as freedom to attack as well as freedom from attack. Weapons expert John Pike comments that the new programs allow the United States to crush someone anywhere in the world on thirty minutes’ notice with no need for a nearby air base, a substantial benefit given the regional antagonism aroused by the hundreds of US bases placed all over the world to ensure global domination. The national defense strategy that Rumsfeld signed on March 1, 2005, enables us to project power anywhere in the world from secure bases of operation, recognizing the importance of influencing events before challenges become more dangerous and less manageable, in accord with the preventive war doctrine. General Lance W. Lord, head of the Air Force Space Command, informed Congress that systems currently under development will allow the United States to deliver a conventional payload precisely on target within minutes of a valid command and control release order—and a nonconventional payload as well, needless to say.²³

Not surprisingly, these actions have elicited concern, criticism, and reactions. Senior military and space officials of the European Union, Canada, China, and Russia warned that just as the unleashing of nuclear weapons had unforeseen consequences, so, too, would the weaponization of space. As anticipated, Russia responded to Bush’s vast increase in offensive military capacity by sharply increasing its own capacities, and has reacted to Pentagon leaks about militarization of space by announcing that it would consider using force if necessary to respond. Missile defense—recognized on all sides to be a first-strike weapon—is a particularly severe danger to China. If the programs show any signs of success, China is likely to expand its offensive capacities to preserve its deterrent. China is already developing more powerful missiles with multiple nuclear warheads capable of reaching the United States, a policy called aggressively defensive by the Asia-Pacific editor for the world’s leading military weekly. In 2004, the United States accounted for 95 percent of total global military space expenditures, but others may join if compelled to do so, vastly increasing the risks to everyone.²⁴

US analysts recognize that current Pentagon programs can be interpreted as a significant move by the United States toward weaponization of space [and that] there seems little doubt that space-basing of weapons is an accepted aspect of the Air Force transformation planning, developments that are in the long term very likely to have a negative effect on the national security of the United States. Their Chinese counterparts agree that while Washington proclaims defensive intentions, "to China and to many other countries the construction of such a system looks more like the development of the Death Star spaceship in the Star Wars film series, [which can be used] to attack military and civilian satellites and targets anywhere on earth.… Space weapons are seen as ‘first-strike’ weapons rather than defensive arms, because they are vulnerable to countermeasures. Their deployment, therefore, could be seen as a sign of US intent to use force in international affairs. China and others may develop low-cost space weapons in reaction, so that US policy could trigger an arms race in space. Furthermore, to protect against the potential loss of its deterrent capability, China could also resort to building up its nuclear forces, which could in turn encourage India and then Pakistan to follow suit. Russia has already threatened to respond to any country’s deployment of space weapons—an act that could undermine the already fragile nuclear non-proliferation regime."²⁵

Meanwhile the Pentagon is pondering a disturbing study by its leading academic consultant on the Chinese military, who has investigated Chinese-language military texts and interviewed their authors, drawing a conclusion that has rattled many in Washington: China sees the US as a military rival. We must therefore abandon the idea that China is an inherently gentle country and recognize that the paranoid and devious Chinese may be quietly treading the path of evil.²⁶

Former NATO planner Michael MccGwire reminds us that in 1986, recognizing the dreadful logic of nuclear weapons, Mikhail Gorbachev called for their total elimination, a proposal that foundered on Reagan’s militarization of space programs (Star Wars). Western doctrine, he writes, was explicitly premised on the credible threat of ‘first use’ of nuclear weapons, and that continues to be policy today. Russia had kept to the same doctrine until 1994, when it reversed its stand, adopting a no first use policy. But Russia reverted to NATO doctrine, and abandoned its call for abolition of nuclear weapons, in response to Clinton’s expansion of NATO in violation of Washington’s categorical assurance to Gorbachev that if he "would agree to a reunited Germany remaining in NATO, the alliance would not expand eastwards to absorb former members of the Warsaw Pact. In the light of earlier history, not to speak of strategic truisms, Clinton’s violation of firm pledges posed a serious security threat to Russia, and is the antithesis of the ‘exclusion’ principle underlying the concept of nuclear-weapons-free zones (NWFZ). Clinton’s violation of the assurances explains why NATO resisted formalizing the de facto NWFZ encompassing central Europe from the Arctic to the Black Sea. MccGwire goes on to point out that such formalization was proposed by Belarus, Ukraine and Russia in the mid-1990s, but would have interfered with plans to extend NATO. Reverse reasoning explains why Washington supports the formation of an NWFZ in Central Asia. Should these former Soviet republics decide to join Russia in a military alliance, an NWFZ would deny Moscow the option of deploying nuclear weapons on their territory."²⁷

APOCALYPSE SOON

The probability of apocalypse soon cannot be realistically estimated, but it is surely too high for any sane person to contemplate with equanimity. While speculation is pointless, reaction to the stark and dreadful and inescapable choice Einstein and Russell described definitely is not. On the contrary, reaction is urgent, particularly in the United States, because of Washington’s primary role in accelerating the race to destruction by extending its historically unique military dominance. The chances of an accidental, mistaken or unauthorized nuclear attack might be increasing, warns former senator Sam Nunn, who has played a leading role in efforts to reduce the threat of nuclear war. We are running an unnecessary risk of an Armageddon of our own making, Nunn observes, as a result of policy choices that leave America’s survival dependent on the accuracy of Russia’s warning systems and its command and control. Nunn is referring to the sharp expansion of US military programs, which tilt the strategic balance in ways that make Russia more likely to launch upon warning of an attack, without waiting to see if the warning is accurate. The threat is enhanced by the fact that the Russian early warning system is in serious disrepair and more likely to give a false warning of incoming missiles. US reliance on the high-alert, hair-trigger nuclear posture … allows missiles to be launched within minutes, forcing our leaders to decide almost instantly whether to launch nuclear weapons once they have warning of an attack, robbing them of the time they may need to gather data, exchange information, gain perspective, discover an error and avoid a catastrophic mistake. The risk extends beyond Russia—and also China if it pursues the same course. Strategic analyst Bruce Blair observes that the early warning and control problems plaguing Pakistan, India and other nuclear proliferators are even more acute.²⁸

Another serious concern, discussed in technical literature well before 9/11, is that nuclear weapons may sooner or later fall into the hands of terrorist groups, who might use these and other weapons of mass destruction with lethal effect. Those prospects are being advanced by Bush administration planners, who do not consider terrorism a high priority, as they regularly demonstrate. Their aggressive militarism has not only led Russia to expand significantly its offensive capacities, including more lethal nuclear weapons and delivery systems, but is also inducing the Russian military to transfer nuclear weapons constantly across Russia’s vast territory to counter mounting US threats. Washington planners are surely aware that Chechen rebels, who had already stolen radioactive materials from nuclear waste plants and power stations, have been casing the railway system and special trains designed for shipping nuclear weapons across Russia.²⁹

Blair warns that this perpetual motion [within Russia] creates a serious vulnerability, because transportation is the Achilles’ heel of nuclear weapons security, ranking in danger right alongside maintaining strategic nuclear forces on hair-trigger alert. He estimates that every day many hundreds of Russian nuclear weapons are moving around the countryside. Theft of one nuclear bomb could spell eventual disaster for an American city, [but this] is not the worst-case scenario stemming from this nuclear gamesmanship. More ominously, the seizure of a ready-to-fire strategic long range nuclear missile or a group of missiles capable of delivering bombs to targets thousands of miles away could be apocalyptic for entire nations. Another major threat is that terrorist hackers might break into military communication networks and transmit launch orders for missiles armed with hundreds of nuclear warheads—no fantasy, as the Pentagon learned a few years ago when serious defects were discovered in its safeguards, requiring new instructions for Trident submarine launch crews. Systems in other countries are much less reliable. All of this constitutes an accident waiting to happen, Blair writes; an accident that could be apocalyptic.³⁰

The dangers of nuclear warfare are consciously being escalated by the threat and use of violence, which, as long predicted, is also stimulating jihadi terrorism. Such terrorism traces back to Reagan administration programs to organize, arm, and train radical Islamists—not for defense of Afghanistan, as proclaimed, but for the usual and ugly reasons of state, with grim consequences for the tormented people of Afghanistan. The Reagan administration also cheerfully tolerated Pakistan’s slide toward radical Islamist extremism under the rule of Muhammad Zia ul-Huq, one of the many brutal dictators supported by the current incumbents in Washington and their mentors. Reagan and associates also looked away politely while their Pakistani ally was developing nuclear weapons, annually endorsing the pretense that Pakistan was not doing so. They and the Clinton administration paid little attention while Pakistan’s leading proliferator, now tapped on the wrist, was carrying out the world’s most extraordinary nuclear smuggling enterprise: Abdul Qadeer Khan, who did more damage in 10 years than any country did in the first 50 years of the nuclear age, according to James Walsh, executive director of Harvard’s Managing the Atom project.³¹

Washington’s aggressive militarism is not the only factor driving the race to apocalypse soon, but it is surely a significant one. The plans and policies fall within a much broader context, with roots going back to the Clinton years and beyond. All of this is at the fringe of public discourse, and does not enter even marginally into electoral choices, another illustration of the decline of functioning democracy and its portent.

The only threat remotely comparable to use of nuclear weapons is the serious danger of environmental catastrophe. In preparation for the July 2005 Group of Eight summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, the scientific academies of all G8 nations, including the US National Academy of Sciences, joined those of China, India, and Brazil to call on the leaders of the rich countries to take urgent action to head off this potential disaster. The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify prompt action, their statement said: It is vital that all nations identify cost-effective steps that they can take now, to contribute to substantial and long-term reduction in net global greenhouse gas emissions. In its lead editorial, the Financial Times endorsed this clarion call, while deploring the fact that "there is, however, one hold-out, and unfortunately it is to be found in the White House where—in spite of the unprecedented statement by the G8 scientists ahead of next month’s Gleneagles summit—George W. Bush, the US president, insists we still do not