War-Gaming Against Fascism to Avoid MAD, with these Republicans: “Really?"

"Either this nation shall kill racism, or racism shall kill this nation." (S. Jonas, August, 2018)

Hiroshima aftermath. Times 1000?!?
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In The New York Times of Jan. 13, 2022 (14th, print edition), there was a fascinating opinion column by two veterans of the National Security Council, who during the time that the Cold War would be coming to a close, were involved in "war-gaming" to deal with the very real threat that was still then perceived, of what was called "mutually-assured destruction," that is MAD, namely mass-destruction nuclear war. (Continuing the Cold War against the Soviet Union was another matter entirely.) It should be noted that the co-authors between themselves served in the Reagan, H.W. Bush, Clinton, and Obama Administrations and certainly engaged in the war-gaming, designed to avoid MAD for both sides, is what they are discussing.

As they said: "In the 20th Century, constructive doomsaying helped prevent the Cold War from becoming a shooting war." Everyone in any position of power and authority knew that if that were to happen a "shooting war" might very well become nuclear, with the result being that "mutually assured destruction." The U.S. did in the end achieve its objective of overthrowing the Soviet government to put in its place some sort of capitalist successor.

Whether the U.S. and its NATO allies had in mind the kleptocracy that restored Russia (without the Czar [in title at least, although who knows, Putin may think of himself in that way]) has become is certainly another matter. What they likely didn't have in mind for sure was a kleptocracy armed with nuclear weapons that threatens the expansion of Western-style capitalism further and further East, and threatens the expansion of Russian-style dictatorial capitalism (as in Byelo-Russia and possibly Hungary) further West. But that is a matter for another time.

This column (of mine) focuses on the proposal by the authors set forth in their column, entitled "We Need to Think the Unthinkable About the U.S." That is to transfer the technique of the "war-gaming" that was undertaken in their times at the National Security Council, designed to prevent nuclear war, to dealing with the oncoming threat of Republo-fascism in the United States. (Of course, they don't use that term, but that is clearly to what they are referring when they use phrases like "pre-empting a right-wing steal in the next national election," "a coercive challenge to election results," and "[an] American conflagration --- including insurrection, secession, insurgency and civil war.")

Indeed, the pro-bourgeois-democracy-capitalist forces in both major political parties (and there still are some in the Republican Party, e.g., Liz Cheney and the forces she represents, but obviously they are rapidly dwindling in number in that party) are very much interested in maintaining the bourgeois/capitalist form of constitutional democracy which has worked so well for them since the founding of the Republic (that is, even if it did take a civil war to firmly place industrial capitalism and its successors in control of the national economy). But there is a major split in the ruling class between the wing that is reasonably happy with the U.S. political-economy as it is, and the wing that isn't.

The problem faced by the pro-bourgeois-democracy-capitalist forces in trying to maintain the current system is that the Republican Party does absolutely not want maintain it. Various elements of it, from Trump on up or down (depending upon one's perspective) clearly want to establish some sort of fascist dictatorship. (For a further discussion of that prospect, including the definition of fascism that I use, see, for example: Click Here, and Click Here.)

It is well-known why they want to do this. Forgetting about their retrograde policies, as is well-known ("controlling the border," cutting every so-called "social program" they can get their hands on, ending any approach to dealing climate change, cutting taxes for the rich, ending abortion rights nationally-by-statute, and so-on-and-so-forth), again, just on the basis of population dynamics alone, they are on their way to becoming a permanent political minority. As such, again as is well-known, even with the political tilt in their favor, favoring the low-population states that the structure of the Senate and the Electoral College give them, if voting were anywhere near fair, they would be out-of-business politically, at the national level.

And what would that produce, in terms of program? That is well-known too. Too much "New Deal-like" programming (as in the Biden "Build Back Better" program which, again as is well-known because of the Republi-crats Minchin and Sinema is likely going nowhere). And then there would be the foci on such major matters as climate change, putting the economic dominance of the petro-chemical industry behind us, the strengthening of PUBLIC education, maintain abortion rights, and indeed establishing (and in some cases just re-establish) real civil rights for our national minorities.

The Republican Party is not shy about all this. From Idaho to Wyoming, to Texas, to Louisiana, to Georgia, to Florida, they are making it crystal-clear that they want to win at all costs. As it happens, a major element of the protofascist wing of the Republican Party has been pursuing this strategy for quite some time, through re-districting and other means of voter suppression (e.g., requiring voter ID, when for minorities for geographic reasons alone, it can be very difficult to get). (Of course, for Blacks in particular, voter suppression has been going on in the South since the end Reconstruction. But this modern, Republican program, is national in nature.) Indeed, in the modern era, it has been since the Koch Brothers established the American Legislative Exchange Council in 2007. Its expressed purpose was to win majorities in state legislature all over the country in 2010 so that when the next re-districting rolled around in 2011-12, they could Gerrymander to their hearts content. And so, they did. And if Gerrymandering looked bad in 2011-12, don't take a look at it now.

Now, the bulk of the modern Republican Party does not see what it will take to win as a "cost," the cost being the end of bourgeois Constitutional Democracy as we know it, changing back to a system where among other things (see the references above) not everyone gets to vote. In the current struggle, for the Republicans it is NOT that they simply want to avoid mutually-assured destruction. To repeat: they are determined to win control of the Federal, states (as many as they can manage) and (as many as they can manage) local (and sub-sections, like school boards) governments.

So, the MAD analogy fails there. Unlike in the Cold War, where Western imperialism did want to destroy what was left of socialism in the Soviet Union, it did not want to do that through any kind of war that might led to nuclear war, for that would almost certainly lead not to victory, but to MAD. For the Soviet Union and the Soviet Communist Party the objective was to maintain their state and their state power, but not through a war that could lead to MAD. Thus, for both sides, at the shooting war level at least, the objective was the same: to avoid MAD. That is not the case here.  To put it simply: the Republican want to WIN, Constitutionally or not, and win for an indefinite period of time into the future.

BUT, interestingly enough, at the end, the authors functionally recognize that fact. For they describe in summary a program which is designed to prevent a Republican victory and maintain, and indeed strengthen U.S. bourgeois (although they certainly did not use that term, and probably wouldn't understand its meaning in this context) Constitutional Democracy. And here, in their own words, from men who are hardly radical, is their political program designed to do just that. Their program does use the technique of "war gaming," but once again it has nothing to do with MAD and everything to do with preserving and strengthening the U.S. system of bourgeois Constitutional democracy.

And so (from their column):

            "A right-wing minority including many elected politicians is now practicing a form of brinkmanship by threatening to unilaterally destroy American democracy, daring what it hopes is a timid and somnolent majority to resist. But that majority has the benefit of warning ahead of 2024.

            "It behooves us to prepare our defenses for the worst. Understandably, the policy focus is now on pre-empting a right-wing steal in the next national election. But success will depend crucially on factors that are beyond control the midterm elections this year and the identity of the Republican candidate in 2024 which suggest that focus is misplaced. And even if a steal is thwarted, success might not preclude a coercive challenge of the election results; quite to the contrary, it would provoke one.

            "War games [a correctly used term in this context], tabletop exercises, operations research, campaign analyses, conferences and seminars on the prospect of American political conflagration including insurrection, secession, insurgency and civil war should be proceeding at a higher tempo and intensity. Scholars of American politics need to pick up the torch from experts on the democratic decline in Europe, who first raised the alarm about growing dangers to American politics. The very process of intellectual interaction and collaboration among influential analysts of different political stripes could reconcile many of them to the undesirability of political upheaval and thus decrease its likelihood.

            "The overarching idea is, publicly and thoroughly, to explore just how bad things could get precisely to ensure that they never do and that America's abject political decay is averted."

Indeed!!