The danger of war with Iran

Harry Targ

Given the troubled history of U.S./Iranian relations spanning at least 60 years, the current threats of war expressed by both Israel and the United States are not surprising. As the influential Council of Foreign Relations put it in January: A drone attack on a U.S. military outpost in Jordan killed three U.S. troops (Reuters) and wounded at least thirty-four, U.S. President Joe Biden said yesterday. He said that Iran-backed militant groups carried out the attack in northeast Jordan near the Syrian border.…CFR expert Steven A. Cook writes for the Wall Street Journal. “No one is going to lend a hand to the U.S. unless Washington takes decisive action to reform the [Palestinian Authority], confront Iran’s ‘axis of resistance’ and isolate the region’s arsonists, notably Qatar and Turkey.”) Subsequent to the ignoble history of U.S. support for the Shah of Iran’s dictatorship starting at the end of World War II, the U.S. militarization of the country , the overthrow of the progressive Prime Minister  Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953, the embarrassment of the hostage taking in 1979, funding Iraq in the brutal Gulf war of the 1980s, the United States has maintained hostility to Iran despite occasional signals from the latter of a desire to establish better relations. During the Obama administration in 2015 a nuclear treaty was negotiated between Iran, the US, and other countries, but it was abrogated by President Trump. U.S./Iranian hostilities have increased ever since, particularly since October 7, 2023. U.S. policy has included an economic embargo, efforts to create region-wide opposition to the regime, expressions of support for a large (and justifiable) internal movement for democracy and secularization in the country, and encouragement, more or less, for growing Israeli threats against Iran. Given this troubled history of U.S./Iranian relations spanning at least 60 years, the current threats of war expressed by both Israel and the United States are not surprising. And now, (April, 2024) the threat of escalating war in the region, the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, has increased dramatically. As Dr. King said about earlier war-making: “This madness must cease.”

 

SOME ARTICLES ON NEW REALITIES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS (Inspired by DISCUSSIONS IN CCDS)

 

Harry Targ

Diary of a Heartland Radical: The Struggle Between the Old Imperial Model and New Realities in International Relations

Diary of a Heartland Radical: International Relations Today a pp.

https://heartlandradical.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-realities-of-imperialism-and.html

Diary of a Heartland Radical: The Struggle Between the Old Imperial Model and New Realities in International Relations

Diary of a Heartland Radical: HOW THE WORLD IS FRAMED: SPOKESPERSONS FROM THE HEGEMONIC POWER AND THE GLOBAL SOUTH

https://heartlandradical.blogspot.com/2023/09/the-non-aligned-movement-meets-in-havana.html

Diary of a Heartland Radical: NATO: THE HISTORIC INSTRUMENT OF US IMPERIALISM

https://heartlandradical.blogspot.com/2024/02/understanding-contemporary-world-order.html

Diary of a Heartland Radical: 21st century techniques of empire

Diary of a Heartland Radical: OLD IDEAS STILL HEGEMONIC AS WE GREET THE NEW YEAR (a repost)

Diary of a Heartland Radical: THE WAR SYSTEM AND ITS VICTIMS

Diary of a Heartland Radical: New Realities in International Relations: Recording of a Webinar and Power Point Presentation

Diary of a Heartland Radical: A Power point History of Imperialism and Dependency in Latin America

Diary of a Heartland Radical: THE EMPIRE IN DISARRAY: THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES

Here Come Raytheon, Rolls-Royce, and Military Studies in Liberal Arts to Purdue University

Harry Targ

(an updated post from December 15, 2023)

The Raytheon Technologies Corporation reported that “Raytheon Technologies is working with the University of Arizona, Texas A&M University, Purdue University, the U.S. Air Force Academy and other academic institutions on hypersonic research and testing, to include the use of wind tunnels to emulate flight conditions and accelerate development.”

Raytheon, one of the five largest defense contractors in the world, sold more than $64 billion in military hardware in 2021. Raytheon profits will be higher in 2022 because of the war in Eastern Europe. Recently, Gregory Hayes, the CEO of Raytheon and a Purdue University graduate who was given an honorary doctorate by Purdue’s Krannert School of Management, predicted that the war in Ukraine will be good for his company’s business.

[Source: twitter.com]

As researchers William Hartung and Julia Gledhill put it: “The war in Ukraine will indeed be a bonanza for the likes of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. First of all, there will be the contracts to resupply weapons like Raytheon’s Stinger anti-aircraft missile and the Raytheon/Lockheed Martin–produced Javelin anti-tank missile that Washington has already provided to Ukraine by the thousands. The bigger stream of profits, however, will come from assured post-conflict increases in national-security spending here and in Europe justified, at least in part, by the Russian invasion and the disaster that’s followed.” https://tomdispatch.com/the-new-gold-rush/

Another military contractor with ties to Purdue University is the Rolls-Royce Corporation which, according to “Purdue Partnerships at Purdue,” signed a research and development program in 2016 “to create the next generation aircraft agreement with Purdue University.” The partnership resulted in a $33 million jet-engine research and development program to create next-generation aircraft propulsion systems.”

Unraveling an electronic engine controller for the Rolls-Royce AE 3007H jet engine during an announcement of a new engine controls facility in Discovery Park District are, from left, Brian Edelman, president of Purdue Research Foundation; Tom Bell, president of Defense and CEO of Rolls-Royce North America; Mitch Daniels, Purdue University president, and Candice Bineyard, director of defense programs for Rolls-Royce North America. [Source: purdue.edu]

In addition, on April 20, 2022, the company announced a $204 million project to expand one building and two test facilities in the Purdue Discovery Park. Shortly thereafter the West Lafayette government granted the Rolls-Royce Corporation a five-year tax abatement for the construction of facilities in Purdue’s Discovery Park.

·                 

[Source: purdue.edu]

Also, the College of Liberal Arts at Purdue University has established a “Forces Initiative: Strategy, Security, and Social Systems” which is designed to help “shape long-range and global military, political, and organizational decision-making for a just, stable, and secure world.” Faculty affiliates include a member of the ROTC program,  a military historian, a political scientist, a “peace researcher,” and a Library Science professor who has published on the F-35, and in military studies journals. https://www.cla.purdue.edu/research/forces-initiative/index.html

 

Andrew Bacevich, the Quincy Institute, has referred to a “permanent war economy” which was established in 1945 and still exists today. Presumably, it has been revitalized since the book first appeared in 2010 by wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the stagnating U.S. economy and the leadership in institutions of higher education who seek greater resources from the Department of Defense and military contractors. Bacevich in Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War, “forcefully denounces the militarization that he says has already become a routine, unremarked-upon part of our daily lives … He rips into what he calls a postwar American dogma ‘so deeply embedded in the American collective consciousness to have all but disappeared from view.”

In the past, liberal arts programs, described and explained what was and is American history, culture, politics, and philosophy. Now it seems,  the Liberal Arts will serve the “postwar American dogma” for which Bacevich refers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/books/review/Bass-t.html

 

 

 

 

THE LEGACY OF DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING: a power point

 https://purdue0-my.sharepoint.com/:p:/r/personal/targ_purdue_edu/_layouts/15/Doc.aspx?sourcedoc=%7B6AFEB237-E51F-4A1F-9064-0F0A144203F4%7D&file=Dr.%20King%20legacy%203.pptx&openShare=true&fromShare=true&action=edit&mobileredirect=true

NATO: THE HISTORIC INSTRUMENT OF US IMPERIALISM

 https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/04/28/peace-movement-needs-to-demand-dismantling-of-nato/

The Struggle Between the Old Imperial Model and New Realities in International Relations

    

                             https://thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/hyper-imperialism/

Peace Activists, rightwing and centrist politicians, scholars, the military and other imperial spokespersons from Europe and North America are warning about new great powers, threats of new wars, and the need to expand military capabilities. This new "cognitive war," as a recent NATO document referred to it, is an ideological campaign designed to gain support for a New Cold War against China, Russia, and the ferment in the Global South. As the power point below suggests, the world is changing, the Global South, particularly mass movements, are rising, and it is in the interest of humanity to recognize these changes. However, the representatives of the old Global North, referred to in the article from "The Hill," supports growing resistance, much of it military. In the end the future could bring a more equitable world order if peace activists and the world's citizenry speak up and give support to the Global South or there could be World War 3.

The Old Model of Imperial Dominance of International Relations

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4564367-rising-global-threats-shift-world-order/?email=6bd814c768769f5dde0b152682030c57faa1c6a0&emaila=0c68e2addfd7b03be101daaf537a419b&emailb=8f382b27aefd0350a17727cf1550f67bd67b24b2f216bf69540bc330402b9e9c&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=03.31.24%20RNS%20-%20News%20Alert%20-%20globalthreats

Power point on the NEW REALITIES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

https://purdue0-my.sharepoint.com/:p:/g/personal/targ_purdue_edu/EYO7NLtcGHVJmZ7wjtKGY-oBwfRyy2FpjLEQtbLM70FQIA?email=targ%40purdue.edu&e=4%3A30ZGKg&fromShare=true&at=9&CID=198AD56D-F842-4A2E-AB1F-36F086C8E51A

A Renewed Discussion of a New International Economic Order

https://heartlandradical.blogspot.com/2022/12/the-new-international-economic-order_27.html

Dr. King Speaks: Economic Consequences of the Capitalist/War System

Some Remembrances of Dr. King Who Was Killed 56 Years Ago

Harry Targ

    Veterans for Peace

Dr. Martin Luther King, in his famous speech at Riverside Church in New York City, April 4, 1967, spoke of the devastating consequences of the Vietnam War on the Vietnamese people and the poor and oppressed at home. To him, the carnage of war not only destroyed the targets of war (their economies, their land, their cultures) but the costs also misallocated the resources of the nation-states which initiated wars.

Every health and welfare provision of the government, local, state, and federal, was limited by resources allocated for the war system. Health care, education, transportation, jobs, wages, campaigns to address enduring problems of racism, sexism, homophobia, environmental revitalization, and non-war related scientific and technological research were reduced almost in direct proportion to rising military expenditures.

Over half the US federal budget goes to military spending past and current. And the irony is that the money that is extracted from the vast majority of the population of the United States goes to military budgets that enhance the profits of the less than one percent of the population who profit from the war system as it exists 

“I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam.”

See a description of the 2024 military budget- https://www.peaceaction.org/what-we-do/campaigns/pentagon-spending/

Since 1967 when he made that speech, Dr. King would surely have added a long list of other wars to the Vietnam case: wars in Central America and South America, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. and the more than 1,000 bases and outposts where US troops or hired contractors are fighting wars on behalf of capitalist expansion. Meanwhile the gaps between rich and poor people on a worldwide basis have increased dramatically with some twenty percent of the world’s population living below World Bank defined poverty lines.

 

Dr. King marches against the Vietnam War in Chicago on March 27, 1967

https://www.jofreeman.com/photos/KingAtChicago.html#:~:text=On%20March%2025%201967%2C%20civil,anti%2Dwar%20march%20that%20Dr.