“Common security” rather than nuclear overkill

Bernd Greiner’s sobering look on American realpolitik since 1945

by Robert Seidel

(9 August 2022) Anyone wishing to take a step back from the current global conflict situation and consider how Switzerland, and the EU states too, can “protect” themselves from the Ukrainian conflict, should read the book “Made in Washington. What the US did to the world since 1945” by Bernd Greiner.

Even if one does not agree with all of the author's positions, his rigorous and well-founded presentation of US foreign policy since 1945 helps to better understand the “transatlantic partner”. It is easy to recognise a direct line between US foreign and military policy over the past 100 years and the current conflict in Ukraine, and to draw the consequences.

Bernd Greiner introduces his historical retrospective as follows:

“We must talk about the dark side of the American century; about the fact that countless people have lost their lives, societies have been traumatised and states have been ruined because the United States wanted to impose its claim on world order. No other nation has shown such brutality since 1945. The United States has waged by far the most wars, has repeatedly launched wars of aggression and has trampled international law; it still spends more money on armaments and maintains more military bases in the world than all other states combined; there is no one to stop it from overthrowing governments it does not like, even though it has a democratically elected president. Of course, we need to think about what the consequences of this record should be. However, it is anything but self-evident, since recently high hopes have again been placed on Washington – as if the obvious could be ignored or explained away as collateral damage of supposedly indispensable leadership.” (Page 7)

All options for the US

The book, published in autumn 2021 by C.H. Beck Publishers – before the start of the Ukrainian conflict – soberly and from numerous sources describes the self-image of the United States as a leading and decisive world power, and its consequences for foreign policy. This self-image involves systematically exhausting all options in order to maintain a dominant US position.

“’America first’ is not a whim of one individual, but the foreign policy narrative of every president to this day. Differences in style and rhetoric should not obscure the fact that when in doubt, an atavistic principle prevails: the strong dominate, the weak follow, the weakest suffer.” (p. 12)

Against this backdrop, Greiner retraces very knowledgeable, among other things, the milestones of American foreign policy: Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Cuba (1960), Vietnam (1963), Laos (1964), Yugoslavia (1991), Kosovo (1999), Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003).

He encompasses the actions of the secret services as well as official policy. Statements of various American presidents are used as a backdrop to describe the often extremely brutal methods of American foreign policy. A foreign policy that “allied” or “friendly” countries hardly understand and do not mirror in their self-image.

The United States: a nuclear “Mad Man”?

Richard Nixon was not the only one to rely on a policy that appeared irrational to any outsider and in which he called himself a “Mad Man” (p. 129). Every “opponent” had to expect any action – even irrational ones.

This arbitrary course of action continues unabated to this day. In this spirit, the United States, as a military power, seeks to reserve its right to be the first belligerent to (victoriously) use nuclear weapons. A pathological idea, to say the least, but one that could prove deadly to humanity.

Greiner describes in detail the US nuclear armament and its deadly “Launch on Warning” doctrine: “If, in the course of a conflict, the impression arises that the opposing side is contemplating nuclear retaliation, or even that a nuclear war is in the works, there is only one principle that applies at the operational level: strike upon suspicion.” (p. 219)

In the context of the current war in Ukraine, where Russia also threatens to use nuclear weapons, one would expect a clear reaction from the European states to settle this conflict immediately. In his epilogue, Greiner describes the reasons for the lack of such an appropriate reaction, based on the Nord Stream 2 tragedy.

Europe’s experience as a perspective

Greiner draws a disillusioned conclusion: “No one can categorically reject the hope of self-correction. To regard it as naive might be closer to reality.” (p. 225) But no conclusion without a perspective.

Bernd Greiner discusses European starting points towards a different policy. Europe’s historical experience is that peace is not everything, but that without peace everything is nothing. He refers to the fact that Europe has the experience of containing violent nationalisms, that it is ready to share sovereignty and that there is a willingness to renounce violence. Thus, alternatives could be found. The question is whether it is desirable to take the European Union as a model, as Greiner does.

Willy Brandt’s “common security”

Bernd Greiner refers explicitly and in some detail to a policy as outlined by Willy Brandt, Olof Palme and Bruno Kreisky. (pp. 231f) Willy Brandt’s notion of “common security” seems to be a strong imperative today in the context of a nuclear overkill and stands out as an important element.

Greiner describes this notion as follows: “There is no longer any security against one another, but only with each other, the security of the opponent is part of your own security; we will all lose together if we refuse to win together.” (p. 234)

It is on this intellectual foundation that security guarantees leading to peace in Ukraine could be found in the spirit of the CSCE.

*  Bernd Greiner (1952) is the founding director of the “Berliner Kolleg Kalter Krieg/Berlin Center for Cold War Studies”. He taught non-European history at the University of Hamburg and until 2014 headed the working group “Theory and History of Violence” at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research. Among his numerous publications, his book on the Vietnam War entitled “War Without Fronts: The USA in Vietnam”, published in 2009, is worth mentioning.

Bernd Greiner. Made in Washington. Was die USA seit 1945 in der Welt angerichtet haben. Editions C.H.Beck. Munich 2021. ISBN 978-3-406-77744-8