Why are you running for President?
How does your experience qualify you to become President?
As part of your educational campaign will you
please explain which crisis you consider the
most urgent at this time and why?
So what are the cures?
What policies do you recommend to cure US addiction to war?
My purpose is to share enlightening knowledge on how with love,
freedom, and wisdom we can bring about peace, health,
prosperity, and justice to our troubled society
that is suffering from militarism, war, inequality, greed,
corruption, and a polluted atmosphere.
Like Socrates and Jesus, I realize that only God is truly wise,
and I do my best to follow the inner spiritual guidance
that comes from the Spirit of God and divine principles.
I admit that I am a fallible human, and in my effort to learn
and teach what is best for everyone
I adhere to the following principles:
1. To tell the truth that frees us and never to lie to people.
2. Always to seek ideas and policies that
will work for the good of everyone.
3. To listen to people and learn as much as
I can from experts on relevant issues.
4. To work as hard as I can to serve all the people
by God’s will rather than money and what is selfish.
5. When I realize I may have made a mistake,
to work to correct it as soon as possible.
6. To love and respect all persons regardless of their sex,
sexual orientation, race, religion, ethnicity, nationality,
political views or other opinions, wealth or social positions.
7. To work to maximize the freedom of individuals to
choose for themselves a good life as long as
they do not interfere with the freedom of others.
8. To make sure that everyone in the United States
has the opportunity to meet their basic needs for security,
health care, education, access to justice, clean water,
pure air, food, housing, and clothing.
9. To dedicate my life to resolving violent conflicts
nonviolently by ending wars, reducing weapons of war,
abolishing nuclear bombs, and replacing them with
peacekeeping and settlement of disputes by justice
through international law and diplomacy.
10. To work to preserve the delicate web of life on Earth
as a habitat for humans and other living creatures by
reducing pollution and restoring land to maintain fresh water.
11. To transform our judicial system so that everyone
has equal justice including victims of crime and so that
perpetrators, instead of being punished and made worse,
can have opportunities to rehabilitate themselves with
education, counseling, and fair treatment.
12. To respect the right of women to have sovereignty
over their own bodies and what is in them.
To encourage birth control so that unwanted
pregnancies can be avoided.
13. To reform elections so that it is easier for everyone to vote,
to promote the National Popular vote in enough states
to replace the Electoral College, and to institute ranked voting
so that one does not have to choose between the
“lesser of two evils” including in the 2020 Democratic primaries.
14. To communicate with the public by holding regular
news conferences and by answering questions openly and honestly.
15. To be fiscally responsible by greatly reducing military
spending and by increasing federal revenues
by making taxes more progressive so that the wealthy,
who have gained from this society, will give back some
of their excessive riches to help those who are less fortunate
and have had fewer opportunities.
16. To make the United States a safer place
by banning assault weapons and reforming gun laws
to include limits on guns and ammunition
while establishing registration and licensing.
17. To accept refugees who are fleeing from other nations
and to respect the rights of immigrants as human beings
so that they can become citizens.
18. To share the wealth and skills of Americans with
other nations that need assistance with basic needs,
in mitigating the effects of climate disruption,
and to help them to have healthy and sustainable societies.
19. To respect freedom of expression and learn from
critics of my policies as well as those who
support them and want to improve them.
20. To share with the public what my policies are
and to explain them so that people can understand them and make comments and suggestions.
For the past fifty years I have dedicated my life to serving God and humanity.
To do that I have been constantly learning.
I earned a B.A. in Dramatic Art, an M.A. in Religious Studies,
and a Ph.D. in Philosophy.
I became a conscientious objector to war in December 1969.
In January 1972 I was ordained a Minister of Light in the
Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness (MSIA),
and in 1974 I was elected to the Ministerial Board
and served for two years editing the Ministerial Newsletter.
I have taught more than forty college courses
in different subjects, mostly in philosophy
(especially ethics), psychology, and religion.
In 1982 I formulated principles for the World Peace Movement.
In 1987 I traveled to 47 states and met with more than
600 peace groups working to influence the 1988 elections
to bring about peace and to take advantage of
Gorbachev’s plan for nuclear disarmament.
I have protested against wars and militarism with many
nonviolent actions and have been arrested for civil disobedience
more than fifty times.
I founded the non-profit corporation World Peace Communications
on September 1, 2001, and since then I have served as its President.
I have written and published 45 books that are all on my website
and can be read there for free without advertisements.
These include 22 volumes on the Ethics of Civilization,
a 2-volume History of Peace, and several other books
related to world peace and progressive politics.
I have been influenced most by Jesus the Christ, Socrates,
Gautama the Buddha, Lao-zi, Confucius, Mahatma Gandhi,
Martin Luther King, Francis of Assisi, William Penn, Rousseau,
Kant, Emerson, Thoreau, Bahá’u’lláh, Tolstoy, Sylvia Pankhurst,
Jane Addams, Dorothy Day, Einstein, Schweitzer, Bertrand Russell,
Mandela, Cesar Chavez, Helen Caldicott, Noam Chomsky,
and Medea Benjamin to name a few.
My policies would implement the teachings of Jesus
as well as these thinkers, and I welcome the support of
Christians and those of other religions and philosophies.
I admit that I have not been elected or held a political office.
My primary goal is to influence the election more than to be elected,
though I will be glad to serve if by a miracle I am nominated and elected.
I am asking for support during the primaries in the polls
so that I can get into the Democratic debates and influence
the other candidates and the voters.
I believe that many people might prefer a candidate like myself
with integrity who is intelligent, honest, and knowledgeable
with good policies to professional politicians who have learned
how to raise money and then vote or govern so that they can
get more money and re-elected.
I have noticed that most Democratic candidates this year
have very little information on their websites about their policies
while asking for money and volunteers.
I ask people to compare my policies to theirs especially in regard to my
29 Progressive Benchmarks for evaluating 2020 candidates.
If you agree with my policies, I ask for your support
during the primaries in order to influence other candidates to adopt these positions.
As part of your educational campaign will you please
explain which crisis you consider the most urgent at this time and why?
Yes, I will. In 2014 I published UNITING HUMANITY
by Spiritual Evolution & Democratic Revolution:
Solutions to the Megacrisis of Climate, Poverty & War,
and I published an updated second edition in 2017.
Thus there are three major crises we need to solve
at the same time, and all three are being made worse by the
counter-revolution of the Trump Administration which has been
trying to take America in the wrong direction on all three,
making them worse.
Yet this folly is awakening Americans to the seriousness
of these problems.
Fortunately progressive Democrats led by
Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are helping
to move Democrats in a better direction on the issues of
climate disruption and economic inequality,
and I strongly support these efforts to reform our society
and government on those issues.
However, the main reason I am running for President is
because none of the prominent candidates are taking
on the war-and-peace issue adequately as I am attempting to do.
Thus this answer will explain why militarism is the most urgent
danger we face as a nation and a species.
Recently I read Daniel Ellsberg’s The Doomsday Machine:
Confessions of a War Planner which is a truly terrifying book.
I knew this was humanity’s greatest challenge and have been
working on it steadily since 1982.
To describe how serious and prevalent this difficulty is
I need to review how this has developed in American history.
The western hemisphere was isolated from the rest of
human civilization for thousands of years until the largest
empires of Incas in Peru and Aztecs in Mexico arose and
were conquered by the Spaniards after Columbus “discovered”
America for the Europeans who had not followed up
on the earlier Vikings’ exploration.
As isolated cultures and tribes the native peoples that
Columbus incorrectly called “Indians” did not have the
advanced technology developed in Asia, North Africa
and Europe nor did they have horses.
When conflicts arose, the Europeans used these advantages
to subdue the native Americans.
In northern America there were fewer native Americans,
and the English and French competed for colonies with
each other and with the Spaniards south of these.
Many of the English and French who came to America
were fleeing religious persecution and monarchical power,
and as they settled land and came into conflict with native
tribes on the frontiers they used their weapons to dominate them.
One great exception was the colony of Pennsylvania where
the Quaker William Penn led the Holy Experiment that respected
the natives without using violence and purchased their land from them.
This peaceful community was a model and lasted until a
military skirmish led by young George Washington in 1754
triggered the French and Indian War in America and then the
Seven Years War in Europe.
The English colonists helped the British defeat the French
and their Indian allies in 1763.
Then the British began taxing the Americans to pay for the war,
but the colonists resisted without using much violence in the
Stamp Act crisis of 1765.
More taxes were imposed and were opposed.
As the conflict gradually got worse, representatives of the
thirteen American colonies met in a Continental Congress in 1774,
and the nonviolent struggle erupted into a war in April 1775
which led to the Independence of the United States in July 1776.
The Americans fought the imperial British,
and the French eventually helped them prevail in 1781.
For a few years the Confederation struggled to get along as
thirteen states, and in 1787 they decided to form a stronger union
and agreed on a revolutionary Constitution which was
accepted after an innovative Bill of Rights was added in ten amendments.
The terrible scourge of African slavery had been accepted
to keep the northern and southern states together,
though the importation of slavery was stopped by 1807.
As population increased, the Americans spread west across
the continent as the slavery issue festered for decades.
Not only did the Americans take land away from native tribes,
they also took Texas from Mexico in 1836 and nearly
half that nation in the Mexican-American War in 1846-48.
The ignorant and foolish President George W. Bush
once said, “We are not a conquering people.”
Slavery also existed in Latin American nations,
but in the 19th century they managed to eliminate this atrocity
without a massive Civil War like the one that killed
more than 700,000 people in the United States 1861-65.
Abolitionists led by William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass
and others worked to liberate slaves and end the rotten system,
and they advocated nonviolent means they called “nonresistance”
taken from the words of Jesus who advised people
“not to resist evil” with violence.
Even though Abraham Lincoln hated slavery,
he was not an abolitionist and was intent on preserving the Union
as his first priority.
I have written the dramatic series Abraham Lincoln,
and I included in that book my essay,
“How Lincoln Could Have Prevented Civil War.”
Although the English colonists had seceded from the British Empire,
he would not let the southern states secede from the United States,
probably because they had such a bad reason for doing so.
Nonetheless this evil and conflict could have been solved
without massive killing which left traumatic scars and
resentment that still persist in the conservative southern states.
The United States spread to the west coast between British Canada
and independent Mexico and took over Hawaii and Alaska,
though did not admit them as states until 1959.
American imperialism went to war against Spain in 1898
and took control of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam.
Though Cuba was dominated by American business, it was not annexed.
Although Woodrow Wilson was raised as a racist in Virginia,
as a Princeton professor of political science and president
of the university he became a progressive Democrat.
After only two years as Governor of New Jersey
he was elected US President.
His Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan was a pacifist,
and Wilson managed to avoid the Great War of 1914 until 1917.
He formulated his famous 14 Points to solve the
problems of that war; but his innovative plan for the
League of Nations tragically failed because the
Republican Party opposed it in order to win the Presidency in 1920.
President Warren G. Harding was probably the worst president
up to that time, and the corruption of the Teapot Dome
and extra-marital scandals were ended by his death in 1923.
Nonetheless the “trickle-down” economic policies of him,
Coolidge, and Hoover led to the stock market crash in 1929
and the beginning of the Great Depression.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt had supported the League of Nations
when he was campaigning as the Democratic nominee for
Vice President in 1920, and after recovering from polio
he was Governor of New York for four years before
becoming US President in January 1933 when Adolf Hitler
became Chancellor of Germany.
Without the United States the League of Nations was not
strong enough to enforce disarmament efforts, and
Germany and Italy were allowed to re-arm and intervene
in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39).
The progressive Republican President Theodore Roosevelt
had broken up trusts with his Square Deal,
and Franklin Roosevelt worked to alleviate the suffering of the
Depression with his famous New Deal legislation
that gave people jobs doing constructive work
without wasting money and workers on the military.
Once again a Democratic President tried to stay out
of a second world war, but FDR led the nation into
the war after the traumatic attack on the naval base
at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii in December 1941.
Roosevelt warned the war leaders not to bomb cities;
but in the later stages of the war the United States
was destroying cities in Germany and Japan,
though it was President Truman who used the atomic bombs
on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
World War II could have been avoided if the League of Nations
had been strong enough to keep the peace and supervise disarmament.
Yet Americans came to believe that this was a “good war”
fought by the “greatest generation” even though about
80 million people died in that war including more than
50 million civilians, more than 20 million from the USSR
and about 420,000 from the US. Yet Nordic nations
that were occupied by Germans showed the effectiveness
of nonviolent noncooperation.
Norway lost about 10,000 people and Denmark 6,000.
Nonviolent methods were used not only by the abolitionists
but also by suffragettes working to gain the vote for women
and notably by Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa and India,
which during thirty years of nonviolent action and negotiation
finally won its liberation from the British Empire in August 1947.
The secrecy of the atomic weapons project was blown
when the bombs were dropped on Japan.
The Soviet Union refused to withdraw their forces from
eastern Europe and by 1949 had developed atomic weapons also,
beginning the Cold War that would last forty years.
In response the US, Canada, and western European nations
formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
military alliance to contain Communism.
By 1953 the US and the USSR had become superpowers
with hydrogen bombs that are about 500 times
more powerful than atomic weapons.
During the Korean War (1950-53) the US forces were
responsible for killing many of the nearly three million people who died.
After the United Nations (mostly Americans) drove the invading
North Koreans back across the border, in October 1950
the US forces invaded North Korea despite the warning
by Zhou Enlai that this would draw the Chinese into the war.
Dwight Eisenhower became the first person never to have held
a political office before being elected US President iIn 1953.
That year after the death of Stalin he was able to stop the
horrendous Korean War. Yet no treaty resolved the conflict
between North and South Korea, and many US troops
have been stationed in South Korea to this day.
Both the superpowers now had genocidal weapons,
and in the nuclear arms race they began developing missiles
to deliver them from land and sea as well as by planes.
Ellsberg learned that Eisenhower’s policy was to retaliate
with massive force to an attack by either the USSR or China
by destroying the power of both those large nations because
he thought it was too expensive to try to plan separate attacks.
This theory of deterring an attack by threatening
Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) is truly an insane
policy when an all-out nuclear war between superpowers
could kill hundreds of millions and might cause a nuclear winter
that could bring about the starvation of the survivors.
The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) directed covert
operations that helped overthrow leftists governments
in Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Indonesia in 1965,
and Chile in 1973 among others.
As a superpower paranoid that Communist countries were
trying to take over the world, the United States got involved
supporting the French colonial war in Indochina.
After the French were defeated and left in 1954,
the US refused to allow North and South Vietnam to be unified.
In 1960 John F. Kennedy ran for President claiming that
the US was behind the Russians because of a “missile gap,”
but in fact the US was way ahead.
In 1961 the United States began stationing Jupiter missiles
in Turkey near the USSR. When the US discovered that Russians
were moving missiles into Cuba in October 1962,
a nuclear confrontation was narrowly avoided because
of mediation by Bertrand Russell and the reasonableness
of Khrushchev.
Kennedy rejected the suggestions of UN Secretary-General U Thant
and insisted that his dismantling of the US missiles in Turkey be kept secret.
Kennedy had been persuaded to limit atomic testing in 1961,
and that year the McCloy-Zorin Accords had made progress
toward eliminating nuclear, chemical, and bacteriological
weapons of mass destruction; but after the Cuban missile crisis
the Soviet Union decided to catch up with the US in the arms race.
In 1964 the US military used an incident in the Gulf of Tonkin
to persuade President Lyndon Johnson to escalate that conflict
into what became a major war in Vietnam that would kill
about 3 million people before it finally ended in 1975.
During that war the US dropped bombs about equal
to all the explosives in World War II during the Johnson years
and as many again under President Nixon.
The assassination of Robert Kennedy enabled Nixon to
win a narrow victory over Vice President Humphrey
who supported Johnson’s war. Recently it was reporte
that Johnson was planning to end the war; but the day
before the election he learned that Nixon had arranged
for a Chinese woman to sabotage the peace talks so that
he would be elected. Johnson could have revealed that
so that Nixon would lose; but he refused to do so because
he did not want to expose government secrets.
Nixon wanted to use atomic weapons to end the Vietnam War,
but the peaceful anti-war demonstrations were so large in the fall of 1969
that he realized it would be political suicide if he did.
Nixon used many dirty tricks to defeat the peace candidate
George McGovern in the 1972 elections, but trying to cover up
those crimes led to his likely impeachment and resignation in August 1974.
President Gerald Ford supported with weapons the
Indonesian invasion of East Timor in December 1975
that would kill more than a 100,000 people,
and President Carter increased the arms sales to Indonesia
which occupied East Timor until 1999.
In December 1979 Carter approved deployment of the
MX, Trident, Pershing, and cruise missiles,
which are first-strike weapons.
The Russians responded to that decision by intervening in Afghanistan.
Carter reacted by declaring that the US would fight
for access to Mideast oil and by cancelling US participation
in the Olympic Games at Moscow.
Ronald Reagan secretly and illegally arranged with the Iranians
not to release the American hostages while Carter was still President,
and they were released on the day he was inaugurated in January 1981.
Reagan was a fierce anti-Communist,
and he revived the trickle-down theory that his rival
George H. W. Bush called “voodoo economics.”
By implementing large cuts in taxes for the wealthy while escalating
the arms race with increased military spending,
Reagan tripled the national debt in his eight years.
This gave the temporary illusion of prosperity but actually
began the class warfare that shifted to the wealthy almost
all of the economic gains during an era of burgeoning
computer technology that has continued to increase
the economic inequality to this day.
Reagan’s anti-Communism worsened the conflicts
going on in Central America where leftist Sandinistas
had taken over Nicaragua, and right-wing death squads
were killing people in El Salvador. Reagan sent military aid
o El Salvador and approved secret aid to Contra rebels
ighting against Nicaragua’s government.
When Oliver North arranged for money from the weapons deal
with Iran to be sent to Contras in planes that imported cocaine
into the US, accelerating the crack epidemic,
in 1987 Reagan had to admit the scandal to avoid impeachment.
In March 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the
Soviet Union and declared his commitment to abolishing nuclear weapons.
At Reykjavík, Iceland in 1986 Gorbachev persuaded Reagan
to accept the idea; but his military advisors changed his mind,
and the deal was blocked because the US would not give up
the Strategic Defense Initiative (called “Star Wars”)
which was theoretical and unlikely to work.
The only way it could possibly work against a superpower
would be in combination with a massive first strike
by attempting to shoot down what was left.
This crazy idea would destroy the deterrence that had temporarily
kept a very precarious peace.
Thus the hostility of Reagan and the Republicans to reasonable
disarmament and peaceful co-existence missed a
golden opportunity to work toward a much more peaceful world.
President George H. W. Bush ordered the invasion of Panama
in December 1989 that killed many civilians in order to arrest
Manuel Noriega, who had worked for the CIA for a quarter century,
but who became so involved in the drug smuggling
which Bush wanted to prove that he opposed.
Bush gained high approval ratings because of the war mentality
in the US with his attack to drive Iraq's forces out of Kuwait in 1991.
This brief war killed more than 125,000 Iraqi soldiers and about 50,000 civilians.
Then the US imposed sanctions on Iraq that UNICEF
reported had caused the death of 878,856 children by 1997
while 1,234,000 suffered from diseases related to malnutrition.
The Cold War ended primarily because of the radical policies
of Gorbachev’s restructuring (Perestroika) and
openness (Glasnost) as well as his efforts toward disarmament
which did persuade Reagan to agree to limit
Intermediate Nuclear Forces in the INF Treaty in 1987.
Gorbachev actually enabled a totalitarian Communist empire
to give up control over allied nations in eastern Europe,
withdrew Soviet forces, and allowed them to be independent and democratic.
Then he even allowed Soviet Socialist Republics including Russia
to become independent and democratic.
All of this was done despite Reagan’s unwillingness to agree
to complete nuclear disarmament.
Yet many Americans believe that Reagan “won the Cold War”
by escalating the arms race so much that it bankrupted the Soviet Union.
In doing so he turned the US into the world’s largest debtor nation,
and those debts have greatly increased since then except
during the eight Clinton years which benefited from the peace
dividend after the end of the Cold War.
In December 1998 at the same time as President Clinton was
violating international law by bombing Iraq,
the US Congress overwhelmingly supported that while
impeaching him for lying about a consensual sex offense.
In 1999 he ordered the bombing of Serbia and
Kosovo in the former Yugoslavia.
After the conservatives on the US Supreme Court went
against their own principles to steal the Presidential election
for George W. Bush in 2000, he gave big tax cuts to the wealthy.
Aggressive US interventions in the Mideast provoked retaliation
which shocked Americans when 19 hijackers took over four airplanes;
two blew themselves up attacking the World Trade Center in New York;
one did so at the Pentagon while resistance in the other plane caused it to crash.
In reaction the US Congress passed the authoritarian
USA PATRIOT Act, and Bush launched an endless war
against “terrorism” because some of those allied to the
dead hijackers were training people in Afghanistan.
Osama bin Laden and others who had fought with the Mujahideen
(and later became Al Qaida) had been supported by
US military aid sent via Pakistan against the Russians fighting in Afghanistan.
In 2002 the US withdrew from the International Criminal Court (ICC).
John Adams once said that there is no greater guilt than to
start an unnecessary war which is what George W. Bush
did in March 2003 when he ordered US forces to attack Iraq
even though inspectors had not found any evidence that Iraq
had weapons of mass destruction.
Military historian Andrew Bacevich has suggested that those
suspected weapons were a cover story because the US
really wanted to control the Mideast because of the oil.
Also Bush probably wanted revenge against Saddam Hussein
for ordering a failed attempt to assassinate Bush’s father.
These disastrous wars have dragged on since then although
the US pulled out many troops in 2011 because Iraq
would not agree to give US soldiers immunity from criminal prosecutions.
President Obama campaigned on an escalation of the
Afghanistan War to please the war mentality that
does not want to lose another war like Vietnam.
Yet it is very similar to that war, though not as bad.
Actually no nation ever wins a war. In war nearly everyone
loses except maybe some war profiteers;
the victors only manage to lose less than the vanquished.
President Donald Trump has made many dangerous threats
of war against North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela especially
as well as other hostile remarks.
He also has revived and escalated the nuclear arms race,
by saying he wants small ones he can use,
by pulling out of the INF Treaty, and he has agreed to
Obama’s program for a major reconfiguration
of the nuclear arsenal over next ten years.
He has supported Saudi Arabia’s horrific war against Iranians
fighting in Yemen which is suffering terribly from this
proxy war in their country.
Trump has also followed the Republican plan of cutting taxes
for the rich while asking for large increases in military spending.
Since the end of World War II the United States has attempted
to overthrow at least 50 foreign governments,
interfered in the elections of more than 30 nations,
tried to assassinate over 50 foreign leaders,
bombed more than 30 countries killing several million people,
and tried to suppress popular revolutions
against oppressive governments in 20 nations.
The purpose of this history lesson is to show that since
December 1941 especially the United States and its people
have had a war mentality which I consider a
contagious social disease that needs curing
if we are going to avoid a future that could destroy the
entire human species or make the Earth
a living hell poisoned by radiation.
So what are the cures?
What policies do you recommend to cure US addiction to war?
Albert Einstein once said, “The unleashed power of the atom
has changed everything save our modes of thinking,
and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”
Thus we need a new way of thinking, a way that Jesus, Buddha,
and many others have taught.
The nation that prepares for war is likely to go to war,
and nations that prepare for war frighten other countries
into preparing for war also.
Thus we need to make changes in the United States
and with other countries.
This massive transformation of our civilization from killing
each other to a safe and peaceful society that solves its conflicts
without violence will take some time and can be carried out in stages.
Nonetheless we must begin with an intelligent plan that is practical
and thorough to solve this immense problem that humanity is facing.
Of course many things can be done at the same time.
Yet to build confidence among the leaders in every nation
we can start by disarming the most dangerous and
useless weapons of mass of destruction, namely nuclear,
bacteriological, and chemical. Much progress has been made
on the latter two, and some reductions have been made
in the nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia.
Since these two nations still have about 95% of the
nuclear weapons in the world, this would be a good place to start.
Diplomatic negotiation can lead to confidence-building measures.
During the first two years or so of the Trump administration
US relations with Russia have been changing in strange ways.
While Trump has been trying to be friendly with Russian President
Vladimir Putin in peculiar and mysterious ways,
Putin has become more aggressive in his military policy in Ukraine
and Syria while also developing supersonic missiles
for delivering nuclear bombs.
Also many Americans are concerned about how the Russians
interfered with the 2016 election to help elect Trump,
and this has naturally increased hostility toward Russia.
To understand the views of others, especially our adversaries,
we need to look at situations from their point of view.
After Gorbachev allowed the dismantling of the Soviet empire
and its transition to independent republics that are no longer
dominated by the Communist Party, the nuclear weapons
were removed from all the states except Russia which
while adopting capitalism became almost a kleptocratic
country dominated by the rich and powerful
under the leadership of Putin.
Gorbachev dissolved the Warsaw Pact in February 1991
and allowed the reunification of Germany with the promise from
the US that they would not expand NATO to the east.
That commitment made by the first Bush and James Baker
was not kept by the US presidents that followed who permitted
the expansion of NATO to a total of 29 nations
by adding seven former Soviet satellite nations in eastern Europe
and then even the three former Soviet republics of
Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.
The Trump government has even been sending weapons to Ukraine
which is on Russia’s border, and Putin is aiding Russian speakers in Ukraine.
Putin has said that the end of the Soviet empire
was the worst thing that happened to Russia in the 20th century,
and he has been trying to regain some of that.
From his viewpoint the US and NATO have been acting
very aggressively in relation to Russia, and so it is understandable
that he has been trying to build up their defenses.
Let us not forget that a main reason why Putin wanted to defeat
Hillary Clinton was because she had tried to get him defeated
in the 2012 Russian presidential election.
She practiced what she called “coercive diplomacy”
which violates the United Nations Charter by threatening the use of force.
Negotiations with Russia will be complicated and must consider
various factors in order to work out agreements that will be good
for both nations and the world.
Nuclear disarmament will actually be of great benefit to the
United States and Russia because both nations will save
much money and wasted efforts on those weapons systems.
Since the Warsaw Pact no longer exists and because several
of those nations have joined NATO, why is there a need
for the NATO military alliance that was formed to prevent
the expansion of the Communist Soviet empire which also no longer exists?
Who appointed NATO and the US to be the police for the whole world?
Many nations and people resent this, especially Muslims in the Mideast.
Why should the US and the NATO nations have to bear this burden?
If there is to be a world police force to keep the peace,
then it should be done by an international organization such as the United Nations.
Using UN Peacekeepers would be a good step in the right direction.
Yet in the long run we also need to realize that
UN peacekeeping is supervised by the UN Security Council
in which the five powers that won World War II and were the
first to get nuclear weapons control that council.
Thus making United Nations governance of international law
more democratic would also be a major step forward.
The United States will also gain much by dismantling its imperialistic
militarism not only by giving up its useless genocidal weapons
but also by removing its military bases in foreign countries.
Okinawans have been protesting against US bases there for decades.
The US has about 800 military bases in at least 70 other nations,
far more than any other country.
The total US military spending for the 2020 fiscal year is $1.668 trillion.
This comes from $704 billion in the Defense Department
and $112 billion military expenditures in other departments.
Additional spending is $868 billion for military health care,
retiree pay, veterans benefits, and interest on the
national debt caused by past borrowing for the military.
China is now second in the world spending about $250 billion,
and Russia this year will spend only $61 billion.
The other 12 nations in the top 15 are all allies of the US.
I estimate that the changes I am recommending could enable the US
to reduce its $816 billion spending on current military by about 25% per year.
Progressive taxes to pay down the national debt will reduce interest payments.
I also recommend that the US stop using the CIA to
lie to people and conduct covert operations.
The use of pilotless airplanes and drones to drop bombs and
assassinate “enemies” in other countries must be ended
because these are violations against international law (war crimes).
How would Americans like it if other nations did this in the United States?
Negotiation to end the war in Afghanistan by being fair
to all sides will enable the US to withdraw its forces and
weapons from that nation. United Nations peacekeepers
could be employed there, and to encourage the maintenance
of peace the US could send humanitarian aid.
The United States could close its military bases in
foreign nations and bring the troops home.
The United States should also stop selling weapons
and giving military aid to other nations.
After the United States and Russia have disarmed at least half
of their nuclear arsenals and related weapons systems,
then the other nuclear nations could be persuaded to
disarm their nuclear weapons at the same time that US
and Russian nuclear arms are completely dismantled.
As nuclear weapons are abolished, UN inspectors
could make sure that no nation has cheated or hidden any.
If one or two nations refuse to give up their nuclear weapons,
then other nations should impose nonviolent sanctions until they do so.
After nuclear arms have been abolished,
the next phase would begin to disarm the worst weapons of war
in stages including missiles, air forces, navies, and armies.
These steps will improve the economies of nations
and make wars much less likely and smaller if any should break out.
Nations would still have police for law enforcement in their jurisdiction,
but no nation would be allowed to send any forces outside their borders.
The United Nations could be made more democratic
and could be strengthened to keep the peace and make sure
that international law is enforced as nonviolently as possible.
UN peacekeepers trained in conflict resolution would be
composed of volunteers from every country
with no more than 5% from one nation.
As the most powerful nation in human history and believing itself
to be dedicated to democratic ideals, the United States
could transform itself from being feared and hated in the world
to lead the world to peace with justice through nonviolence and international law.
Having been perhaps the most warlike nation in the world
for the past three generations, the United States
could redeem itself and its ideals by leading the world to peace
through universal disarmament and respect for human rights
of which the most basic is security that prevents violence.