Trump derangement syndrome infects the nuclear disarmament movement
The
campaign to oust President Trump by any means necessary has been recognized by some
as an ugly factional war within the American ruling elite, but the anti-Trump,
anti-Russia crusade, based on many fabrications,[1]
has been extremely successful in duping a large segment of the intelligentsia and
the general population to go along with the narrative that wants to say all was
well before, and all will be well again if the nation’s natural ruling class is
restored to power with the help of the CIA, FBI and NSA. We are witnessing “tribal
warfare inside the ruling class, happily joined by the wage serfs of each tribe.”[2]
One
might have hoped that the nuclear disarmament movement would stay above this
factional war over who will rule the American empire. Nuclear disarmament
activists are often assumed to have an international perspective and unbiased
critique of all the nuclear powers. The slightest sign of bias toward one
nuclear state would instantly discredit any disarmament group as a propaganda
tool, betraying their supporters and wasting their donations. Unfortunately,
some individuals and organizations in the anti-nuclear movement have taken the
anti-Trump side in the factional war, expressing more interest in American
dominance and partisan politics than in their stated goals. A glaring example
of this shift in priorities was on display in two recent interviews on The Real News Network. First, Aaron Mate
interviewed Joe Cirincione, president of Ploughshares
Fund, a nuclear disarmament organization founded by sculptor Sally
Lilienthal in 1981. Joe is also described proudly on the Ploughshares website
as “an MSNBC contributor, regularly making appearances on The Rachel Maddow Show.”[3]
Referring to the July 2018 Helsinki Summit between the American and Russian
presidents, Joe had this to say about the meeting:
Both of these men [Trump and Putin] are dangerous.
Both of these men oppress basic human rights, basic freedoms. Both of them
think the press are the enemy of the people. Putin goes further. He kills
journalists. He has them assassinated on the streets of Moscow. Donald Trump
does not go that far yet. But I think what Putin is doing is using the
president of the United States to project his rule, to increase his power, to
carry out his agenda in Syria, with Europe, et cetera, and that Trump is
acquiescing to that for reasons that are not yet clear.[4]
In
a subsequent interview a few days later, Russian historian Stephen Cohen
pointed out what was extremely lamentable about these views coming from a
prominent nuclear disarmament activist at the head of a very well-funded
American organization:
How is it that Joe, who was once one of our
most eminent and influential, eloquent opponents of nuclear arms race, who was
prepared to have the president of the United States negotiate with every Soviet
communist leader, including those who had a lot of blood on their hands, now
decides that Putin kills everybody and he’s not a worthy partner? What happened
to Joe? I’ll tell you what happened to him. Trump. Trump has driven
once-sensible people completely crazy. Moreover, Joe knows absolutely nothing
about internal Russian politics, and he ought to follow my rule. When I don’t
know something about something, I say I don’t know. But what he just said is
ludicrous. And the sad part is... that once-distinguished and important
spokespeople for rightful causes, like ending the nuclear arms race, have been
degraded, or degraded themselves by saying things like he said to the point
that they’re of utility today only to the proponents of a new nuclear arms
race. And he’s not alone. Somebody called it Trump derangement syndrome. I’m
not a psychiatrist, but it’s a widespread mania across our land. And when good
people succumb to it, we are all endangered.[5]
Joe
Cirincione’s comments suggest that he is now more than ever interested in being
a pro-American, Democrat, anti-Trump partisan than in pursuing his
organization’s advertised goals. Five years ago he was interviewed on Fox
News when Syria’s chemical weapons were in the news, and when asked
if we should trust the Russians, he stated:
We deal with our adversaries. We deal with
our enemies. Eisenhower negotiated with Stalin [sic: Khrushchev]. Nixon made
friends with Mao. You deal with people you don’t like, that you are adversaries
with, but you do it for the national security interests of the United
States.
These
words show that Stephen Cohen is correct. Joe Cirincione has changed in recent
years. However, the change is not that drastic or surprising. It seems that the
interest in nuclear disarmament always took second place to “the national
security interests of the United States.” His response on Fox News implied that
indeed the Russians cannot be trusted, but the conversation included no
balanced statement about whether the Russians could trust the United States. In
the same interview Joe also said Syria’s arsenal of chemical weapons was a
threat to Israel, but he avoided saying at the same time that Syria and other
countries in the region feel threatened by Israel’s nuclear arsenal—and this
comment was from a man whose organization was founded upon the goal of nuclear
disarmament, not on chemical weapons issues.
In
the early 1990s, the founder of Ploughshares,
Sally Lilienthal, gave a $5,000 grant to MIT physicist Theodore Postol for him “to
finish a technical paper that exposed the Pentagon's exaggerated claims of the
effectiveness of Patriot missiles during the Persian Gulf War.”[6]
More recently, without support from Ploughshares, Postol has investigated Syria’s
alleged use of chemical weapons and concluded there is no evidence for the
numerous attacks that the Western media has been quick to attribute to
President Assad.[7] This skeptical
counter-narrative received almost no attention in the media, and when it did,
the skeptics were accused of being “stooges” for the Syrian government. One has
to wonder in this case if Ploughshares
has drifted far away from its founder’s original vision, trading away integrity
in order to have a voice and be a player within the Washington establishment.
Why is it no longer supporting dissenting voices like Theodore Postol? Readers
can assess the 2017-18 list of
grantees for themselves to see, who, in addition to the NATO
mouthpiece and designated Facebook censor, Atlantic
Council, now receives support from Ploughshares.[8]
The
roster of board
members at Ploughshares is
almost entirely American, with no Chinese, Russian, French, Indian, Pakistani,
or North Korean representation. The board consists of heads of think tanks,
corporate leaders, lawyers, former politicians, and even the vice president of
the Investment Management Division of Goldman Sachs. Another board member is
the former director the US Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National
Laboratory’s Center for Global Security. The line between NGO and GO is
completely blurred here. The “Finances”
page of the Ploughshares website lists net assets for 2017 of $33,239,759, with
$32,040,357 held in capital reserves. There were new contributions of $6,541,682
and a 14% rate of return ($4,459,538) on the capital reserves added to the
contributions. One might ask, if indeed Trump is such a threat to global
security, why Ploughshares does not spend the reserve fund like there is no
tomorrow. If things are as dangerous as they say, this would be an excellent
time go all in on a massive effort to save the world.
During
the Cold War, American conservatives often accused the nuclear disarmament movement
of being infiltrated by Soviet agents and communists, but since the 1980s the opposite
has happened. The movement has actually been infiltrated by guardians of the
American empire. Colin Powell, Henry Kissinger and others of their ilk suddenly
saw the anti-nuclear light as their communist foe disappeared. Nuclear
disarmament became just another cause célèbre
for the Beltway think tanks to blend in with the general concern for “international
security and cooperation” and “emerging threats” to the unipolar world order. Thus
the work Ploughshares supports is far
from radical or disruptive, and its message now undermines the purported goal
of the organization. I doubt they would give a grant to aboriginal groups
fighting uranium mining on their territories, or rural communities trying to
stop a nuclear waste disposal project. The Nuclear
Hotseat podcast, Radiation and Public Health
and other worthwhile anti-nuclear projects operate on small donations and
unpaid contributions, but one must keep in mind that they speak out about the
connections between nuclear energy and nuclear weapons, so they don’t have Goldman
Sachs executives and national security experts clamoring to serve on their
boards.
China,
Russia and other adversaries, and now even the loathed US president himself, are
seen as obstacles that have to be dealt with before we can do the real work on
nuclear disarmament. Perhaps on some magical day in the future, there will be
no more “tyrants,” “strongmen” and “despots” to wave fingers at. The US will
intervene and perfect their societies, and then it will negotiate nuclear
disarmament while brandishing the conventional arsenal of the trillion-dollar
Pentagon budget. This is the implicit assumption of a broad segment of the American
nuclear disarmament movement, and unfortunately many well-meaning people in the
anti-nuclear movement fail to see it or dare to call it what it is.
Stephen
Cohen’s question, “What happened to Joe?” may in fact be the wrong question to
ask. Nothing happened to Joe. He has just revealed himself as what he always
was—a partisan for American supremacy. Considering the interests and tendencies
of the people on the board of Ploughshares
Fund, and those of many of the donors, “hyperventilating over the phantom
collusions of Donald Trump”[9]
is exactly what one should have expected. It is time for individual activists
to be much more discerning in choosing the anti-nuclear groups they will
support, and time for a truly international group to form outside of such
partisan, nationalistic and hybrid quasi-governmental organizations.
Notes
[1]
“Ray
McGovern—Potential U.S./Iran Catastrophe & The Mueller Investigation,”
Talkingstick TV, 10:20~.
[2] Jason
Hirthler, “Russiagate
and the Men with Glass Eyes,” Counterpunch,
August 15, 2018.
[4] Aaron Mate, “Debunking
the Putin Panic with Stephen F. Cohen,” The Real News Network, July 24, 2018.
[5]
Ibid.
[6]
Patricia Sullivan, “Sally
Lilienthal, 87; Created Peace Fund,” Washington Post, October 27, 2006.
[7]
James Carden, “The
Chemical-Weapons Attack In Syria: Is There a Place for Skepticism?” The Nation, April 19, 2017.
[8]
Jonathan Vanian, “Facebook
Partners With the Atlantic Council to Fight Election Propaganda,” Fortune, May 17, 2018.
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