For America, War is Peace

By Nicholas – member of the Western Rite Vicariate, a part of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese in America

The United States is a rapidly failing state.  The quality of life of average Americans, and Westerners in general, is in free fall. According to Bank of America, almost a third of all American households “spend more than 95% of their disposable income on necessities such as housing costs, groceries and utility bills”. A recent Lending Tree survey discovered that nearly 25% of all American households couldn’t pay their entire power bill at some point within the past year. If you have a job, the pay check barely covers the basics necessary to live. If you don’t have a job, good luck finding one, especially with the wave of immigrant labor competing with you. In the second half of 2024, job openings in the U.S. plunged from 12 million to below 8 million. Over roughly that same period, the U.S. lost a total of 78,000 manufacturing jobs. The economic situation in most of Europe is the same or worse.

Economists refer to the U.S. as a “de-industrialized economy”. Productive industry has been replaced by a FIRE (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate) economy loaded down with enormous levels of debt service, health insurance costs and real estate costs. This is not really an economy producing useful goods and services, but rather one designed to channel money towards the top 1% through transfer payments. When the cost of credit and rents go up, underhanded government statistics count the increases as a rise in America’s GDP. Which is one big reason why comparing U.S. GDP figures with those of a productive economy, such as China, is so misleading. China makes things people actually want to buy. The U.S. does not.

In fact, what the U.S. currently seems best at is making debt. Total U.S. government debt is already over $36.1 trillion, and is growing by about $1 trillion every 100 days.  Interest on U.S. debt has already surpassed $1 trillion annually, which makes it the second biggest governmental outlay. It will soon be first. Even worse, the Federal Reserve System is the largest domestic holder of U.S. public debt, with holdings of $5.24 trillion. The Federal Reserve creates money out of thin air to “loan” to the U.S. government through the purchase of Treasury debt instruments. The government then spends that money in ways that are inflationary. Round and round it goes.

America is not just snowed under with debt. It is also physically collapsing. American infrastructure is mismanaged and prone to catastrophe. There is a water main break every two minutes in the U.S. with an estimated 6 billion gallons of treated water lost each day. 43% of U.S. public roadways are in poor or mediocre condition. The U.S. power grid is rapidly aging, and incapable of scaling for increasing demand from population growth, AI, and other factors. The U.S. has the highest number of train accidents in the world. Our airports are embarrassingly and dangerously out of date. The list of woes just keeps going.  The civil infrastructure in the U.S. is so dangerously dilapidated, that the estimates for the total repair bill run into the trillions of dollars.

Chances are extremely high that you frequently drive over unsafe, soon to fail bridges, roads, and overpasses. Clearly, no one in power cares about your safety. The real question is – why don’t you?

Americans are collapsing right along with our country. Chronic disease affects 50% of the population, and its care consumes more than 85% of health care costs. Growing numbers of children are developing chronic conditions at earlier and earlier ages. Our mental health is deteriorating at an alarming rate, with women hardest hit. 1 in 5 women in the US experience a mental health issue each year. Obesity rates are skyrocketing. Americans are increasingly fat, sick, crazy, and dead.

Our societal trust is also absolutely broken. Childhood vaccination rates are plummeting because parents no longer trust the health establishment. (In the case of vaccines, rejecting government medical advice is not a bad thing.) Overall, trust in our government institutions is so low that Naomi Wolfe, a lifelong feminist liberal, openly speculated on her blog that far from a product of mere incompetence, the LA fires are actually the fruit of a conspiracy between elements of our government and foreign actors, possibly even including the government of China. Before COVID, such speculation would have seemed laughably farfetched, especially coming from someone with a track record of espousing mainstream liberalism. But now? Not so much.

Most Western governments, by virtue of their failure to provide even moderately passable living conditions for their own citizens, are stunningly unpopular and desperately clinging to power. President Macron of France enjoys a 17% approval rating. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s approval rating fell by 49-points just months after winning election in a landslide. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s approval rating in late 2024 hit a new low of just 18%. While all of those politicians are still in office (for now), not everyone can survive such unpopularity. Joe Biden was effectively removed from the U.S. presidency by his own party after a disastrous first term record. His chosen successor, who essentially embraced every one of his policies, lost in a landslide. Justin Trudeau of Canada is leaving office soon, his party expected to be thoroughly trounced next election.

Average citizens are clearly fed up, and that does make the ruling class in the West nervous. Not only politicians, by the way. Even the billionaire class is feeling the heat of popular anger after the murder of Brian Thompson, CEO of United Health Care. His accused killer, Luigi Mangione, was hailed in some quarters as a new folk hero. This public reaction clearly unnerved tech billionaire Peter Thiel, as evidenced by his stammering reaction when asked what to say to supporters of the alleged CEO killer:

 “It’s, I don’t know what, what to say? I, I think I still think you have, you should try to make an argument. And I, I think this is, this is you should, you know, there may be things wrong with our health care system, but you have, you have to make an argument, and you have to try to find a way to convince people and and change, change it by by that, and this is, you know, this is not going to work.”

Peter Thiel is so connected to the U.S. power structure that his protege, J.D. Vance, will soon be assuming office as the Vice President of the United States. Yet, even he can’t seem to figure out how to defend the current exploitative economic and political system against the potential uprising of hundreds of millions of pissed off Americans and other Westerners. The billionaires, corporate executives, and government apparatchiks all know the common people vastly outnumber them. The governing elites’ power and survival completely depend on the continued acquiescence of average people to their incompetent rule.

Which is why the current situation really makes no sense. The people in charge have absolutely looted and trashed both America and Western nations in general. Why are Americans, and other Westerners, not in the streets with pitchforks and torches to liberate themselves from these parasitic elites? (Figuratively speaking, of course, as Orthodox Christians do not endorse mob violence.)

But Americans, and other Westerners who have the misfortune to live under governments mostly dominated by the U.S., are not out in the streets demanding an end to the economic pillage of their nations. Americans may grouse on the Internet about billions going to Ukraine and Israel, while disaster victims in the U.S. get pocket change, but no one is actually lifting a finger to change it.  We have the numbers and the power, but are content to eat potato chips on our couches, getting up only occasionally to vote for candidates who, after claiming victory, proceed to ignore everything they promised their voters.

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss. 

If only we could vote harder…

There are multiple factors for our quiescence in the face of our national destruction, but one stands out above all others. The U.S. is permanently at war. By extension, therefore, American allies are also permanently at war. This has effectively been the case since WWII, though the war tempo really accelerated after 9-11. To really make the societal cost of this clear, the 78 million Americans born after 2001 have never experienced one day of peace in their entire lives. As one war, one crisis, one enemy blends eternally into another, Americans sometimes ask, “When will this be over? When will things get back to normal?”

The fact is that for America and the countries it dominates as “allies” – the current situation of constant war is normal. There is no longer any other normal to “get back to”.

An ostensibly socialist Prime Minister commits the UK to 100 years of support for a foreign nation, and no one even bats an eye. Meanwhile, the UK is a social and economic basket case. 

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We can’t say we weren’t warned. The Party in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 ruled by the use of slogans such as, “War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength.” While most people know of the book, few seem to have actually read it. Which means the majority of Americans have absolutely no clue what those seemingly oxymoronic slogans really mean, or that they are explained in the novel by using a “book within a book” format. Below is a discussion of the slogan “War is Peace”:

But ‘War is Peace’ is explained in more detail in the ‘book within a book’ that features in Nineteen Eighty-Four. This (fictional) book is titled The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism and its author is Emmanuel Goldstein, a rival of Big Brother who supposedly runs the Brotherhood, a resistance movement. Chapter III of Goldstein’s book, which Winston reads, is titled ‘War is Peace’, and explains the origins of the Party’s slogan:

 

The war, therefore, if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is merely an imposture. […] But though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs. War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact.

 

The very word ‘war’, therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist. The peculiar pressure that it exerted on human beings between the Neolithic Age and the early twentieth century has disappeared and been replaced by something quite different. 

In Orwell’s novel, as in America’s post-WWII experience, war is not really fought to achieve battlefield objectives. War is not a way to gain territory or capture resources or protect citizens or overthrow the opposing government (though any and all of those things may be the stated objectives for the conflict, and may occur as a by-product of the fighting). For the ruling elite, war is a means of preserving the Status Quo of its own hierarchical power. War is meant to be forever. It is a permanent state of affairs. The enemy is merely a pretext, as the government is actually fighting a war of control against its own people. The external threat only exists as a justification for government policies that would otherwise be intolerable to the average citizen.

Daily, from government and the media, we are fed the following exhortations (just not in such plain terms so as not to scare average people into thinking for themselves): “We must stand united against or enemies, so dissent must be crushed. We can’t have nice things, because we must sacrifice our own wellbeing for the war effort. We must curtail civil liberties to ensure our national security. You can’t be too careful rooting out traitors. We must fund our allies instead of domestic priorities, because of the danger posed by our enemies. We must spend unlimited amounts of borrowed and printed money on ‘Defense’, because our enemies will crush us if we don’t.”

It is always 1939. Hitler is always about to invade Poland. The Holocaust is mere moments away. Japanese troops are already massing to invade California. Only the willingness of “free people” to bear any burden, make any sacrifice, can save the “free world” from the threats du jour. The U.S. hasn’t won a major war since 1945, but this record of abject failure seemingly has done little to dampen the enthusiasm of Americans for military conflict. It just feels so good to hate and bomb foreigners. Nothing makes you feel more patriotic than watching a foreign capitol get a good dose of “shock and awe”. In fact, a commitment to foreign wars is one of the few policy positions that unifies Americans across almost all party, ethnic, and religious lines. The only point of contention between war enthusiasts of the Left, Right, and Center seems to be – whom to destroy first? Should we prioritize fighting Russia, China, Iran, Palestine, Mexican Drug Cartels, Venezuela, or Muslim Jihadists (presumably the ones we don’t fund)? Or maybe some combination of the above?

A large number of MAGA types openly opposed U.S. involvement in the Ukraine War. They were, of course, branded by Neoliberal and Neoconservative supporters of that war as traitorous apologists for Putin. After 10/7/2023, a large chunk of MAGA joined Neoliberals and Neoconservatives in backing Israeli genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. That same coalition would, undoubtedly, come together for a war on Iran. A war against China would build a similar coalition across party and ideological lines.

Have you ever wondered why no real peace movement ever materializes in the United States? Because the vast majority of Americans, and Westerners in general, genuinely fear one or more foreign “threats.” Americans have allowed their ruling class to imprison them in a perpetual Two Minutes Hate, but with the illusion of choice since we get to pick our favorite villain(s). Every shade on the political spectrum from red to black has its own pet wars.  Advocating consistently for global peace, and non-interference in the affairs of others, means getting hit constantly from all sides. Few people can stand up to being so completely cast out from polite society.

A very diverse 21st Century America finds itself a nation whose people are united by little else besides commitment to a Defense budget of $852.2 billion a year, 750 military bases in at least 80 countries and territories, hundreds of billions in various kinds of foreign assistance, billions more spent on “intelligence” agencies / operations, and endless foreign wars. Even as the U.S. and its allies fall apart, few dare to really question the logic of it all.

One of the most humiliating aspects of all this is that the Pentagon routinely fails government audits. The “best and brightest” military leaders in the world can’t even account for how they spend the hundreds of billions they get each year. They don’t know where the money goes, but they constantly assure us that they need more of it.

National Security means never having to say you are sorry, no matter how badly you fail. It is the ultimate “Get out of jail free card.”

National Security has invaded, and twisted, every aspect of American society. Lobbies associated with the Defense Industry shell out over $110,833,815 a year to influence government. Lobbies, such as AIPAC, who wish to steer the course of U.S. war policy (in effect using the U.S. military as mercenaries for foreign causes) kick in hundreds of millions more. There is a constant revolving door between the government National Security apparatus and highly lucrative private positions. Play the game, win the prizes. The level of corruption is staggering.

A hidden factor in all this are the venture capital companies who profit from not only owning the merchants of death, but also the companies who win contracts to “rebuild” destroyed nations. Blackrock, Vanguard, and State Street also own the companies who get sweetheart deals to buy up assets in countries our military adventures have ruined. RFK Jr. in this short video explains the money laundering scam at the heart of NATO expansion, the Ukraine War, and the anticipated Ukrainian rebuilding effort. It is well worth the watch.

Ever wonder why a military alliance formed to protect against a defunct Soviet Union still exists and is constantly expanding? It isn’t to make you safer. NATO expansion makes all the right people huge piles of money. Watch this RFK Jr. video for more information. 

Americans, by and large, are aware of the constant government spying and censorship campaigns conducted in the name of National Security. The Snowden revelations and subsequent investigations have made all that clear to anyone not living under a rock. Americans are also frequently frustrated and angry at how the TSA (created as a response to an event now over 20 years old) has turned air travel into an unpleasant, tedious experience.

Most, however, are unaware of how extensive National Security control over almost all sectors of government really is. For example, the U.S. COVID responses were labeled “countermeasures” and were ordered by the US Department of Defense (DOD) in partnership with the HHS. On its own, HHS did not have the authority to sign contracts for hundreds of millions of novel medical products. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) noted in its July 2021 report on “Covid-19 Contracting” – HHS “partnered” with DoD to “leverage DoD’s Other Transaction Authorities (OTA)…which HHS lacked.”

You have DoD to think for the mRNA jabs, and by extension, the mandates which wreaked so much havoc on so many people. While this fact will shock most Americans, it is nonetheless true. “Public health,” like so many other government functions, is merely an extension of the National Security State.

A state of war means those in power get to do anything they want. Anyone objecting to official National Security priorities is a tool of the enemy – be that Russia, China, Assad, Muslim Jihadists, or a virus. So get in line, comrade, and follow Big Brother! Whichever Big Brother happens to be in power at the moment, of course. In the end, you will find they are all pretty interchangeable.

As comedian George Carlin once remarked about the American ruling elite, “It’s a big club and you ain’t in it!”

But… wait. Americans have again elected Donald Trump as president. Trump did not start any wars during his first term, though he also didn’t end any either. To start his second term, however, Trump has promised to end the war in Ukraine. Trump’s incoming team is also claiming credit for negotiating a ceasefire in Gaza, a welcome pause in the Palestinian Genocide.

So things are looking up, right? Maybe. But I doubt much will change. Why? Multiple reasons.

Let’s start with the Middle East and Gaza. The press release version of the Gaza Ceasefire is:

“President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, leaned hard on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to get him to agree to compromises to advance a Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal, Israeli media reported on Monday.”

Trump has stuffed his cabinet with Zionist war hawks. (I covered some of the top ones in this article.) Trump is the most Zionist president of all time, leading the most Zionist cabinet of all time. Facts he is absolutely proud of. Israeli press reports indicated that a delegation of extremist Israeli Jewish settler leaders were specially invited to participate in Donald Trump’s inauguration. These are the people who actively seek to annex and fully ethnically cleanse Gaza and the West Bank of all Palestinians. That’s just a warm up, as they plan in the future to take more land from Syria, Jordan and others to achieve the “Greater Israel” mandated by God. These people love Trump. They should love him, as he will give them anything they could ever possibly covet. Trump already gave Netanyahu verbal approval to “finish the job” in Gaza and the West Bank.

Does any rational person believe that Trump really forced Netanyahu to do anything he didn’t want to? Of course not. This was a tactical move fully supported by Israel, even if not acknowledged as such publicly. The outgoing administration can distance itself somewhat from genocide, even though the issue will cling to Democrats for quite some time to come. Trump gets a much needed foreign policy win to start his administration, while making himself look like a tough, independent leader. He also burnishes his anti-war credentials, which do matter to a segment of his base.

The Israelis get to take a pause in Gaza to focus resources elsewhere such as in Syria. Post-Assad Syria is under Israeli, Turkish, and American occupation and is the battleground in what is actually a multi-sided civil war. The three occupying powers back different sides and have different goals, though the U.S. will assuredly subordinate its own to support its “greatest ally”. The situation in Syria is so tense that the Israeli press is openly speculating about a future conflict with Turkey, a nation with whom Israel now shares a border and with whom the U.S. is allied through NATO.

The mess in Syria is just one part of a Middle East in ruins thanks to U.S. and Israeli meddling. In the region, there are already over a million dead and open wars are raging in Libya, Sudan, Somalia, and Lebanon. Far from solving anything, each war just sets the conditions to start the next one. Which could be against Iran, assuming the Turkey situation in Syria gets resolved peacefully.

Iran, seemingly on the brink of developing a nuclear arsenal, appears to be in America’s and Israel’s crosshairs. Trump is on record saying that Israel should strike Iranian nuclear sites. Trump’s incoming regime is stacked with Iran hawks who would love nothing better than to take on a large, educated nation with a population of over 86 million people. The consequences from such a regional war, assuming the conflict stays non-nuclear and thus does not end civilization, will haunt the U.S. and the Middle East for decades to come. On the other hand, a protracted and costly war will do wonders for Raytheon stock. Maybe the CEO will send thank you cards to Gold Star families?

Most Americans can’t find Iran on a map, much less understand just how big and capable it is. 

But don’t get the idea that Trump’s cabinet picks are solely focused on Zionism. When hiring war mongers, Trump is an equal opportunity employer. One of Trump’s scariest picks is neocon Elbridge Colby, a raving anti-China fanatic, who will serve as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. That will make him the #2 boss at the Pentagon. Colby wrote U.S. grand strategy for contesting China’s aggression must be redefined. What did Colby mean by Chinese “aggression”? Our future junior military overlord was referring to China’s insistence that the U.S. honor its treaty-commitment that Taiwan is a part of China. Colby demands that the U.S. abandon the Shanghai Communiqué negotiated by Henry Kissinger so that Taiwan can formally declare itself independent. The hope is that China will then invade Taiwan so that America can try and conquer China. I wish I was making this up. Instead of Trump reversing Biden’s provocative Taiwan policies, he and his incoming team seem to be doubling down on everything including more arms shipments.

Trump is also signaling in other ways his desire to “confront” China. As explained by the N.Y. Post, acquiring Greenland is all about checkmating evil Chinese ambitions in the Artic Sea:

Trump’s second term was always going to be more China centric. Xi’s rapidly expanding People’s Liberation Army will be a principal driving factor when his administration rewrites the National Security Strategy as mandated by the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986.

 

Greenland may appear to most Americans to be an isolated concern; yet the Danish territory will play an increasingly vital role in U.S. national security in the decades ahead.

 

Currently, the threat is largely Russian. But, in 2018, China declared itself a “Near Arctic State” and launched the “Polar Silk Road” – an Arctic version of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative in partnership with Moscow.

Nor is it just Greenland that Trump covets as a strategic asset in the coming showdown with China. The talk of acquiring Canada and the Panama Canal are also related to perceived national security needs in the face of the “China threat.” Maybe Trump really can, and will, end the proxy war in Ukraine. (Maybe even in time to save very lucrative contracts for Blackrock owned companies.) But what good is that bit of peacemaking if the U.S. just pivots to pursuing conflict with the largest manufacturing economy in the world? Particularly since the growing relationship between China and Russia is likely to pull the Kremlin into any future confrontations in any case? Further, despite the possibility of a settlement to the war in Ukraine, Trump continues to present Russia as a threat to the U.S. So, how much peace are we likely to get from Trump II after all, even on the European front?

Trump has also given no indication that he plans to cut one dollar from the U.S. Defense budget. In fact, we have every reason to believe that Trump plans to spend even more money on war preparation in the future. His speeches, and those of his subordinates, are all about “rebuilding” America’s armed forces. A phrase that, historically, has meant bigger budgets are coming up.

Bigger budgets despite the facts that U.S. Defense spending is wildly disproportional to the budgets of our “adversaries”, and is also massively higher than necessary to protect the American homeland. The U.S. spends more on Defense than the next 10 nations combined. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that maintaining a credible nuclear deterrent costs around $75 billion per year. That is 7% of the current “Defense” budget. You could toss in another $100 billion more or so to maintain credible conventional forces. Liberated from the control of profit-seeking corporations and corrupt government officials, the defense of the United States could be affordable, effective, and budgetarily transparent.

One other interesting tidbit to note. Successfully invading the continental United States would be the most massive undertaking in the history of warfare. Successfully doing so would require an enemy nation with a minimum of $50 trillion in annual GDP, and a willingness to risk nuclear annihilation. Russia’s is $2 trillion. China’s is less than $18 trillion. No one is going to occupy any American city, unless Washington just opens the border and lets them in.

Keep all this in mind when officials from the Trump II Administration explain why Washington doesn’t have the money for domestic priorities, especially when it is needed to help American families after fires and other disasters. 

On the other hand, is Trump playing some kind of 4D chess? Despite his being surrounded by war mongers and prone to bellicose rhetoric, some analysts argue that it is all an elaborate act. In their opinion, Trump really is keen to avoid war. Author and geopolitical analyst Gilbert Doctorow has made that case:

The logic I see is that a bellicose stand on produced-to-order conflicts that can be solved at little cost to Washington, the proverbial kicking ass that Ronald Reagan practiced to great effect, is intended to provide cover for what otherwise would look like a humiliating defeat for Washington should it cut military aid to Kiev and stand by passively while the Kremlin imposes capitulation on the Zelensky regime.

Facing a massive defeat in Ukraine, maybe Trump is just changing the subject by bringing up Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal? (The Gaza agreement doesn’t hurt either.) Acquiring some new land, or even just some favorable deals, could provide victories of the sort Trump needs to garner the popular support he needs for real peacemaking. Or so the theory goes.

Massive NATO loss in Ukraine? What’s Ukraine? 

Nice thought, but from our perspective as Americans it doesn’t really matter whether Trump is serious or merely posturing. Something George Orwell failed to anticipate is that actual shooting is not necessary for the rulers to gain the benefits of perpetual war. A suitably hyped Cold War works just as well as a hot one. Trump has given every indication that his administration will keep Americans frightened, in debt, and getting poorer by the minute – whether we end up in a major war or not.

The governing elite of the United States will never voluntarily stop the Perpetual War Machine. They will keep presenting us with one “boogeyman” after another, often multiple at one time (Consumers love choices!), until enough Americans simply refuse to go along. There is absolutely no reason for us to keep falling for this grift. Especially since we now have so much access to information proving that “National Security” is nothing more than multi-generational con. Remember how, for example, the Soviet Union was posed to conqueror Western Europe at any minute and only the U.S. Army was keeping the Red Devils at bay? Turns out that was all a lie:

That Washington’s trillion-dollar Warfare State is rooted in internal self-perpetuation rather than external threats is evident from the post-cold war dog that didn’t bark. That is, the Soviet archives are now open, but there’s absolutely nothing there to validate the cold war axiom that the Soviet Union—along with the affiliated menace of Maoist China—was hell-bent on world military domination, starting with western Europe, Japan and then extending to the lesser lands all around them.

The American ruling elite were lying about the foreign threat then, and they are lying now. It turns out that we have met the true enemies of the American people, and they are us.

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