CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Donald J. Trump, America’s Latest War Criminal

Trump responds to a reporter’s question on the Iran peace deal. (Screengrab of video posted to X.)

For the past 60 years, U.S. presidents have used and misused the concept of threat to justify the use of force on a massive scale.  U.S. presidents in the post-World War II era were so fearful of a congressional and public return to isolationism that the threat of communism was exaggerated to justify increases in defense spending and maintenance of hundreds of unneeded military bases and facilities.  In the current era, we are devoting large sums of money to defense spending as well as justifying military bases vulnerable to attack from third-rate military actors such as Iran.

The Truman Doctrine in 1947 exaggerated the Soviet threat to southeastern Europe to justify involvement in Greece and Turkey.  It paved the way for the creation of NATO in 1949.  The Reagan Doctrine exaggerated the threat of repressive “Marxist-Leninist” regimes to justify record military spending in peacetime as well as a global role for U.S. military forces.  U.S. politicians and pundits became comfortable with the notion that the military-industrial complex was responsible for our overreaction in the international arena.

In actual fact, however, it was nonmilitary theorists—all leading U.S. policymakers—such as Dean Acheson, Paul Nitze, John Foster Dulles, the Bundy brothers, the Rostow brothers, and so many others who were preoccupied with issues of military security.  This preoccupation led to obscene spending on U.S. strategic forces as well as the use of the Central........

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