Ultimate Violence: Doomsday, Part 4

The Dangerous Case of the United States

Dwight Eisenhower once warned: “Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.”

John F. Kennedy concluded: “Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind.”

Much depends on the United States. In April 2019, Jimmy Carter remarked that this country has been at peace for only 16 of the 242 years of its existence, calling it “the most warlike nation in the history of the world.”

The U.S. addiction to raw military power and the immense political and economic gains that come from it is no longer even the people’s agenda but an industry.  In order to maintain and expand its hegemony and profits, its people, rather, must be kept uninformed and propagandized.

The now year-old Russia-Ukraine conflict is the latest example.  It was obvious to mental health experts that the dangerous psychology of Vladimir Putin could have been attenuated rather than buttressed, and the invasion easily avoided altogether.  However, to do so requires a mindset that is different than his.

The same psychology is ratcheting up tensions with China—at a historic time when the Asian nation had been settling into economic, not military, competition.  Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceled a trip to Beijing in the midst of Washington wrongly accusing Beijing of sending a spy balloon, and now a delegation of U.S. lawmakers is visiting Taiwan, only six months after former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s provocative visit.

While the United States and Russia own 90 percent of the world’s nuclear warheads, with inventories of five to six thousand each, China is continuing to increase its stockpile of 350, as of 2022. What is not talked about is that any nuclear strike will set off a chain reaction that will cause few humans to survive, let alone have meaningful survival.

The crisis Albert Einstein and colleagues began warning us about, immediately upon the development of atomic weapons, is here and now and greater than ever before.  Yet, public awareness is at its lowest point.  Whereas the World Health Organization recently announced that it is stockpiling medicines for nuclear emergencies, this is obviously not enough: we need a new mindset if we as a species are to survive.