At the same time, values and ideas which were considered universal, such as cooperation, mutual aid, international social justice and peace as an encompassing paradigm are also becoming irrelevant.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maybe this piercing observation by Roberto Savio, founder of the news agency Inter Press Service, is the cruelest cut of all. Geopolitically speaking, hope \u2014 the official kind, represented, say, by the United Nations in 1945 \u2014 feels fainter than I can remember. \u201cWe the peoples of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war . . .\u201d<\/p>\n
I mean, it was never real. Five centuries of European colonialism and global culture-trashing, and the remaking of the world in the economic interests of competing empires, cannot be undone by a single institution and a cluster of lofty ideals.<\/p>\n
As Savio notes in an essay called \u201cEver Wondered Why the World Is a Mess?,\u201d: \u201cThe world, as it now exists, was largely shaped by the colonial powers, which divided the world among themselves, carving out states without any consideration for existing ethnic, religious or cultural realities.\u201d<\/p>\n
And after the colonial era collapsed, these carved-out political entities, defining swatches of territory without any history of national identity, suddenly became the Third World and floundered in disarray. \u201c. . . it was inevitable that to keep these artificial countries alive, and avoid their disintegration, strongmen would be needed to cover the void left by the colonial powers. The rules of democracy were used only to reach power, with very few exceptions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whatever noble attempts at eliminating war the powers that be made in the wake of World War II \u2014 Europe\u2019s near self-annihilation \u2014 didn\u2019t cut nearly deep enough. These attempts didn\u2019t set about undoing five centuries of colonial conquest and genocide. They didn\u2019t cut deeper than national interest.<\/p>\n
And global peace built on a foundation of nation-states is an oxymoron. As historian Michael Howard noted in his book The Lessons of History<\/em> (quoted by Barbara Ehrenreich in Blood Rites<\/em>): \u201cFrom the very beginning, the principle of nationalism was almost indissolubly linked, both in theory and practice, with the idea of war.\u201d<\/p>\n All of which leads me to the $400 billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the most expensive warplane ever built, or not quite built. The aircraft, designed by Lockheed, is now seven years behind schedule, but the Pentagon had planned to display its new baby this week at the Royal International Air Tattoo and the Farnborough International Airshow in the U.K. This debut has now been called off because the engine of one of the planes caught fire on a runway in Florida in June, and officials feared the problem was systemic.<\/p>\n In other words, it could happen again. It could happen at the airshow, with the jet\u2019s prospective customers \u2014 Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan and eight other U.S. allies \u2014 in attendance. Grounding it was a business decision. Indeed, it was a decision made at the delicate intersection of business and war.<\/p>\n \u201cThe setbacks follow a series of technical problems and development delays that have affected the F-35, one of the world\u2019s most ambitious weapons programs, with estimated development costs of around $400 billion,\u201d Nicola Clark and Christopher Drew wrote this week in the New York Times. \u201cAnalysts said the timing of the problems, just as Lockheed Martin was hoping to demonstrate the plane to prospective export buyers here, could not have been worse.\u201d<\/p>\n What I found interesting \u2014 well, overwhelmingly depressing, actually \u2014 was the fact that this story ran in the Times\u2019 International Business section. When Savio writes, \u201cAttempts to create regional or international alliances to bring stability have always been stymied by national interests,\u201d this may be what he\u2019s talking about. National interests are business interests. In the mainstream media, this is simply a given.<\/p>\n And the ongoing setbacks and escalating cost don\u2019t matter. The F-35 project is still going forward, even though, as Kate Brannen wrote recently in Foreign Policy, \u201cover the course of the aircrafts\u2019 lifetimes, operating costs are expected to exceed $1 trillion.\u201d<\/p>\n The warplane\u2019s supply of funding is inexhaustible, apparently. Congress is behind it all the way. And it\u2019s hardly news. \u201cLockheed has carefully hired suppliers and subcontractors in almost every state to ensure that virtually all senators and members of Congress have a stake in keeping the program \u2014 and the jobs it has created \u2014 in place,\u201d Brannen wrote.<\/p>\n Austerity is for losers. There\u2019s always money to wage war and build weapons, indeed, to continue developing weapons, generation after generation after generation. The contractors are adept at playing the game. Jobs link arms with fear and patriotism and the next war is always inevitable. And it\u2019s always necessary, because we\u2019ve created a world of perpetual \u2014 and well-armed \u2014 instability.<\/p>\n The problem with the United Nations is that it\u2019s a unity of entities defined by their hatred of one another and committed to the perpetuation of \u201cthe scourge of war.\u201d We won\u2019t begin creating global peace until we learn how to bypass nationalism and the single, unacknowledged agreement binding nation-states to each other: the inevitability of war.<\/p>\n __________________________<\/p>\n Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His book,<\/em> Courage Grows Strong at the Wound (Xenos Press), is still available. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n