A couple of words about the US wars in Vietnam and Korea

Unfortunately there are still many Americans who prefer talking about Vietnam war in terms of counter-factual history and in terms of 'ifs and woulds' - 'if we won then this and that then we would...'. Korean war still continues to be used as a kind of positive example and justification of other things, which otherwise look ugly, feel ugly, sound ugly... because they are ugly.
Among the recent typical questions on this topic I tried to reply to was the following: 'If we had won the Vietnam war, do you think Vietnam would be like South Korea? In other words...very developed, technologically advanced, awesome, etc? Such a shame the North was so brainwashed, and such a shame we were so afraid of communism'
Here I considered it my duty to publish my answer to this and many other similar questions (or conditional assumptions):
In other words, would there be two Vietnams, one of which would live more or less well and free, and in another one people would die in their millions like in North Korea because of starvation and state repressions and whose militarism - like that of North Korea - latter would strike terror into all other countries and peoples in the region sapping their resources up to this day? Interesting question.
I would say no, because Vietnamese type of civil was unlike Korean to my mind is not winnable in full. Korean war was a political war organized "from top" and controlled from center by 'official' political forces. In this respect it was not truly 'civil', rather too governments tried to carve up the country and nation for a number of reasons. But in case of Vietnam, at some stage the war became truly civil in the sense that it was organized 'from bottom', external American forces and their presence became absolutely illegitimate in the eyes of a critically huge proportion of population, and the practical methods the US allowed itself to use only too well served the purpose shifting the war irreversibly from ideological plane (in which it was wrongly represented in the American media) into nationalistic plane - one nation invades another and in reality fights with its people. The war was unwinnable in ideological and political sense.
Even if one assumes that some kind of purely military 'magic' success could allow the US to recapture the whole territory and even formally hand over a sort of political control to some kind of Vietnamese government, the war wouldn't have stopped and this political control would have existed more on paper than in reality. The war would have gone to a kind of smoldering phase, and returned in its full bloody strength to a full fledged state just as American military presence had been wound down.
There's no if, cos this war at a very early stage was lost both ideologically and politically. Power is not everything.
About South Korea: in place of many Americans I wouldn't be too much proud of this achievement. While fully recognizing the well-being of S Korea, it is worth remembering that the relative success of this half of the nation has been built on the bones and flesh of millions upon millions upon millions of killed people of the other half of the nation. The problem is still there, and now the whole region is a victim of Korean military and nuclear blackmail. America is also negatively affected. Communist totalitarian regimes could be veeery different in terms of their detrimental effect. Cuba is one thing, and North Korea absolutely another story. But it was the war and the division of the nation that would have predetermined North Korean regime as being in future the bloodiest and most dangerous on earth as well as most isolated and stable among all others much softer communist autocracies. Also let's not forget those millions of lives that were claimed by the Korean war, supported actively on the Western side by the US. The memory of this played and continues to play in the hand of Korean regime.
I know Americans like to claim rewards for their Korean involvement but at the same time they are not that much willing to recognize their responsibility for another 'gift' they at least partially were involved in making to the Korean people and the rest of the world - North Korea.
This again raises the question about the methods and successes of the US in the Cold War, which, to be frank, in reality was not so much about communism against capitalism, as about Russian militaristic and political aggression and 'influence' (in the guise of communism). Unfortunately it was Russia who partially taught America her ugly methods and her intrinsic cruel cynicism - not the other way around. Russia remained what she has always been - the land of terror, but the US became much more 'Russian' in its ways, habits and judgments, and this is, I think, a true shame. Shame for a great nation which before the end of World War II historically had been a very wise and pacifist nation, none the weaker for its pacifism. A nation which could produce such intellectual and political giants like Franco Delano Roosevelt, a nation that because of the Cold War mentality - ends justify the means - was in the end intellectually reduced to such a condition, that would become possible to elect people like Bush and Chaney. That's a shame, and this is a mental legacy of all those wars in the past. I could only imagine what would the late Roosevelt, or other American intellectual politicians of the past for that matter have said about all these Cold War mental transformations of the US. That's a shame. Trade blockade of the minuscule and non-dangerous nation of Cuba - that's a shame! And the last two wars, which are direct result of 'Cold War mental national degradation' - that's a shame. When a former intellectual giant behaves like a petty militaristic dwarf - that's a shame!
Let there be no mistake and misunderstanding, I believe in America and I am sure that the new generations of American people and politicians are already starting to 'recover' this great nation back on the normal trajectory - pacifist intellectuals of the 21th century like Obama. But it is precisely my worries and my wish of good to this country that forces me to criticize and deplore its inordinate mistakes and some times criminal mistakes of the second part of the 20th century and the first decade of  the new one. Of course the context of the Cold War helps us to understand many of those mistakes, but not justify.
I am myself Canadian but I love the US and what is more I believe in its good-protecting and good-creating potential, but the US will not be able to move forward into the 21th century if American people won't learn to recognize the national mistakes. And it's difficult, very difficult to recognize national historical mistakes bordering on crimes against your own and other peoples. It's very difficult to recognize that the state sent to death tens of thousands of American girls and boys to death under the grandiose and blissful slogans of help to the nations that would actually have been ravaged or even split as a result of those messianic lies. Moreover, all of what I say here, now is increasingly recognized by American top politicians themselves. Let's deal with the history honestly, draw the lessons, get wise again, and start moving mentally and culturally into the new century, into the century of peace and Enlightenment, not of war and cheap militaristic Messianic. Into the age of Christian values according to Christ and not according to Bush, Islamic values according to Muhammad and not according to Bin Laden, etc. Let's grow up, cos the mental and political health of America is a critical condition for the piece in the whole world.

About nationalism

What is nationalism? What is the nature of nationalism? What's objective and what is subjective part of it?
Very deep, old, and so far under-resolved question continuing to occupy the minds of intellectuals and scientific world. There is a heck of a lot of books and theories made on this theme.

In my humble opinion, It's a sort of religion, psychological phenomenon, the end result of which is a mass identity replacement. Many people do have a 'damaged identity' and the morbid anxieties related thereto. But when those people unify themselves under the flag of some similarities (even if those similarities are completely ephemeral or trivial) they feel some kind of relief of the pain, created before by the identity vacuum. It is like a club of people who were born on Monday and who pride themselves on this fact, ascribing to Monday some 'special' even mystical (religious) qualities.
The anger and potential war (in broad sense: war of words, war of trade, military war in extreme cases) with those belonging to 'other world' is one more major way of venting the identity deficit anxiety. As with all self-fulfilling forecasts, the state of war with 'bad others' allegedly threatening their special national belonging, is, in the eyes of nationalists, one more evidence that they are really 'special and different', and, hence, do have a fairly firm identity.
All of this doesn't mean, that the degree and activity of nationalism cannot be controlled or 'activated'. There are more and less acute forms, and even, what could be called 'sleeping  or latent nationalism'
Historically, nationalism began really strong and really felt in earnest only from the end of 18th - beginning of 19th century. Then the Governments got the real power over their nation-states and learned how to exploit and even create this identity-crisis. The very term 'nation-state' was invented by European politicians as demagogic conception  (let many pundits disagree with me on this one) to legitimize their political power sharing and power holding over multitudes of people. Nationalism became an ideological weapon of mass destruction, a perfect masterpiece of demagogy - super-duper socio-psychological medication, allowing Governments to hold power and to gain those ends, which before they could have gained only with the help of the direct force against their own peoples. Of course that's not to say that they (politicians in power) themselves did not get sucked in the self-induced ideological whirlpool of nationalism: of course it was flattering and pleasant for their ego to 'realize' that they were kind of heroes and good helpers who were 'kindly asked' by their respective 'nations' to rule over them, as if those nation were single subjects with a single will. Of course this self-reflection was 'just what the doctor ordered' for those powerful people in authority - such conception would help even the most hard-headed politicians, sending thousands upon thousands of people to war and death, to sleep tight and well (though even before those ruling elites had not suffered too much from a bad sleep). Needless to say, this concept of state-nation was 'nationally relativistic' and politically conveniently split the moral (what is bad in general could be good if France or Germany needs it; what is bad for England and her people could be good and ethically justified for Russia etc - regional fragmented moral, that serves not the universal ideals of the Enlightenment, but 'nations' and in practice the political elites of those 'nations')
So nationalism in the shape we know it now was to a large degree an invention, a lever developed, improved and 'polished' by the political power after the so called nation-states were created and the means of controlled mass communication and broadcasting were developed. So now we more often than not deal with an artificially induced 'boosted' nationalism (in overdrive mode), 'genetically modified nationalism'.
But the fundamental causes of it lie in the identity crisis and the venting of the relevant anxieties and psychological pain.

A few words about the EU: good idea, but in reality a big fraud

Long ago. Looong ago it already started look like a very bad, and, to be honest, politically and economically unsustainable idea. But for the general public it began to be increasingly evident 1) politically when the so called Constitution (later to be replaced with Lisbon treaty) was failed several times 2) economically when the specter of communism in its modernized guise again started haunting Europe: Germany and some other countries produced and paid, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Ireland etc just borrowed and consumed.
The problem is that EU, in the form it is now, is a kind of Union of European governments, not of European Nations, and it's not controlled by peoples, that's a sad reality that goes fundamentally against the political tradition and self-consciousness of the nations 'misunited' under the EU flag. In practice it is a purely bureaucratic structure, and maybe it would be OK IF it would not be sold at the same time as a kind of 'true product' of the total unification of peoples, which could be possible only and only under the condition of true democratic control. It is just a club of the governments that use this machinery rather often to avoid control on the part of their respective nations. So not only is this 'Federation' undemocratic, but also it makes less democratic in practice those nations included in this sweet project.
Economical problems partly emanate from the political ones, cos you cannot make a unified currency zone (eurozone) without making a unified fiscal zone. But the latter, obviously cannot be done without a serious 'blurring' of the sovereignty of the participating states, that's, without some kind of tectonic political merger with the formation of some kind of united states of Europe. From the very first it was obvious for many many critics that you cannot essentially deprive countries of their right to print its own currency, giving them instead the right to borrow without restriction the new common currency, but at the same time allow them to control their budget totally on their own. You don't have to be Einstein to understand that every Government in those poor countries will just borrow as much money as it wants just to stay in power its 4 or 8 years, shifting the burden to the next people.
Change the EU in a better way and then it might be worth for other nations to be part of it

Republicans are suffering the deepest ideological crisis ever

I think it is because the Conservative party is now suffering a deepest ideological crisis as a whole. Some kind of powerful degeneration of the party and their ideological foundations and political self-awareness occurred.
They in essence cannot now offer anything really fundamentally different from what they actively exploited in the last century. They has become kind of ideologically exhausted and turned into a kind of political Dinosaurs the best embodiment of which are such figures like McCain and many others - people from the 20th century and sometimes from the 19th. The best they could think of in this situation is to wrap the old content with the expiry date long gone in a kind of renewed wrapper: and the result was the appearing of plastic dummies like Sara Palin and some others. From the age of the Cold War they - Republicans - still need some kind of war as a pivotal driver and the main justification of their existence in power (not necessarily a military war - just a war of words, a war of measures and ideas): the war with some enemy that wants to deprive the US of its values of its air, water, good traditional family, peace, security etc etc. In this old good scenario they wouldn't have to create any new values, they would just defend the old ones and you would thank and praise them for performing this heroic task.
But the problem is that now comes an age when war is not essential like it was, an age when politicians must be ready to accept new realities and sometimes review some old values. But Republicans just turned out to be absolutely unprepared to generate something new. So there we are: they just mechanically continue to do what the did in the past: search for what could be categorized as bad and dangerous and make an impression of actively defending you against those evils (be it taxes, or Wikileaks, or abortion, masturbation etc etc etc), even if those evils sometimes were unarguably created by themselves (like crisis).
Yes before recent it worked ok and the 9/11 terrorist attacks played into the hands of the Republicans, giving their ideology (or rather lack of it) an extension - a new enemy to fight with, and, there they were needed again. But all too soon people understood that wars in the old fashion breed terrorists faster than kill them, and that a new vision and study of this problem is vital to really decrease the influence and reduce the number of terrorists. But new vision and new studies and approaches require creative work, not heroic slogans or swinging your fists. And creative work is not something Republicans happened to be ready for (not only in fight against terrorism but on all fronts, including international relations, economy etc). So the Party kind of 'degenerated' because of its inability to offer something fundamentally new.
The same goes for economic policy. Republicans have always supported big corporations and tax-cuts for them under the guise of supporting free market and business in general - that's a core part of their ideology of promoting free capitalism. As a result of these warm relationship 1) those big corporations lobby republicans with... of course money and 2) many former and present reach businessmen go to republican party if they decide to go to politics. That's it. Republicans loved big reach corporations (banks, oil companies etc) which in turn love republicans: that was part of their ideology; help the reach, make themselves reach too and then the usual people may have something from all of this too. In this sense they too positioned themselves as defenders of traditional values of free market and entrepreneurship against 'enemy' - all those who ostensibly what to steal those values.
But now, especially because of the crisis, it has been becoming increasingly clear that helping big corporate giants with low taxes has NOTHING to do whatsoever with either support of free market of with support of small and middle-sized business, which are the main generator of jobs and economic development.
No enemy - that's the problem. No body around to blame and to protect us against in order to sell us our air and water in the political sense (we couldn't have these too if it were not for Reps). You just cannot be conservative in the 21th century, because the increasing pace of development of this world is not compatible with 'conservatism' in the shape it was viable in the last century. The whole ideological basis, or, to be more accurate, and illusion thereof, has just fell at the seams

How to avoid ridiculously 'freak' wars like in Iraq and Afghanistan in future?!

Now a majority of TV and radio programs dedicated to the topic of Afghan war are trying to discuss whether or not it makes sense to increase the number of troops there, whether or not it's worth to leave that country and what would be the best strategy to train Afghan army. Unfortunately the media is markedly falling behind the reality: the Afghan war has already been lost, and the exit in a 'cut-and-run' mode is inevitable. To transform Afghanistan into a country (which it is not), especially a stable one the world should have pumped into it not billions, not even trillions, but TENS of trillions of dollars, and now the humankind is still just not enough developed technologically and financially to create new countries from scratch. From the very first it was a game at the expense of taxpayers in monetary terms and at the expense of lives of the young boys in uniform who decide to join the army not based on rational knowledge and analysis but based on their blind trust and believe in the demagogy of politicians whom they mistakenly identify with their country.
The only practical question is how to minimize financial and human losses and - for politicians - how to leave in the most 'face-saving' way possible. How sharply to cut and how fast to run - that's the only headache of those who make decisions. That's all. Game over. Shedding tears about the actions of the US and its NATO allies is long irrelevant - it would have made sense not even yesterday, but the day before yesterday. But what really may be of some concern is rather ineffective tackling of this problem by the media, which continues to discuss the problems which must be left to historians to deal with.
What one would really like journalists, publicists and politics pundits to knock around in panel discussions is HOW to prevent the repetitions of the similar wars (including Iraqi one). How come that a whole bunch of so called developed democracies so easily and rashly involved themselves in such a preposterously catastrophic device? How could it be, that "mother of democracy" Britain just rushed headlong to wage a war against... Taliban after US declared its aim to catch... Osama?! For that matter, UK - parliamentarian democracy - plunged into Iraq war a couple of years latter only because it's PM for some absolutely unknown reasons individually decided to do so - how come?! With more than 80% British population against the war too! Is there really not a single tool or mechanism left even in the most advanced democracies to prevent them from the wildest most obvious and most dangerous war sprees?! Even when the most of the population of those democracies openly express their discontent and disagreement with the 'decision'? HOW COME - that's the first question. And what needs to be done to avoid throwing similar tantrums in the future is the second question. What Afghan and Iraqi campaigns brought to light is not the question of how we should transform those countries but the question of how we must transform our countries and political controls to avoid suchlike follies in future. Many publicists notice, and rightfully so, that the actions of the US and their many western allies were catastrophic for the countries invaded, but even more catastrophic they were for the those 'liberators'. Things that must not be possible in the 21th century for the western democratic world have happened to be quite possible, and that must sound the real alarm of the western media. That's where the main focus of the intellectual elites must be on, because if such absurdly uncontrollable and stupid things are possible we can only guess what comes next. It's a very big disappointment.
Emanuel Kant expected that democratic countries based on the concept of civil society are less inclined to wage wars, but, unfortunately his thesis so far has not been clearly and definitively proved in practice. Quite likely not because this German visionary was mistaken in his assumptions but because the real democracies are still very much underdeveloped. If the key decisions of war and piece beyond the country borders were taken only after a plebiscite British troops might have not ended up in Afghanistan or Iraq. All this dramatic happenings would have been even more unlikely if before such a plebiscite the people had been entitled to the full detailed information based on which such decisions were recommended, or, at the very least, parliamentarians had been given the pass to "the vaults of state secrecy".

The US has a hopelessly out-of-date political system: reform urgently needed

This post was written in reply to the questions put by one history student, very much disenchanted with the modern American politics.
His main assertions about the present state of affairs in the US institute of the political power were the following:
1. Every politician that gets elected always leaves with quite a considerable amount of money, then before they got in politics.
2. 9 out of 10 times a senator or congressman will vote along party lines, even if an opposite vote against their party would be more beneficial for the people that elected them.
3. The party that does not have the majority will do everything they can to sabotage the other party, even if the law or amendment will greatly help the American people.
I have lost all respect and trust in the people who run our country. They seem to put themselves first, their party second and the American people last.
Such was 'the cry of soul' of the inquisitive athor.


All those assertions and claims are both quite accurate and legitimate.
The problem is not about personalities, but about system. The US has a hopelessly out-of-date political system, which just can not fully support the democratic standards at the proper level in the 21ht century (by no means it follows that the US is not a democracy any more, but that it is losing its efficiency and can turn from a democratic country into a DEMOCRATISH country if nothing's changed). It's kind of unprofitable and equally difficult to be honest within the old system within the new realities of the 21th century.
In my opinion, the objective need for a deep reformation concerns the legislative branch as well as the executive one in America.
That's a BIG problem, because it would require to modernize the Constitution on the one hand, whereas the Americans are veeery conservative and prejudiced against even the very word 'change' when it comes to the Holy of Holiest - Constitution. Sort of crisis that needs to be solved.
Presidential model consolidates too much power in one hand, whereas the US is federation. Centuries ago strong presidential power for the US was justified for a number of 'evolutionary' reasons, but. I am afraid, not any more - now that's become an obstacle, that decreases flexibility, accountability, and increases the risk of wars and corruption. Either the US needs many presidents, or just no one and a powerful parliamentarian system.
The representative system based on the domination of two parties, ideological basis of at least one of which hopelessly eroded due to natural causes, is a completely obsolete too. For example, a group of people who are able and willing to solve the problem of green energy must join the ranks either of GOP or Dems, though both parties historically are not geared to lead the energy revolution. A century ago the ideological problems of the balance between socialism and capitalism were topical, important and occupied the heads of people. Now times have changed, and those problems have been solved on a practical and theoretical level many years ago. The right way of transition to a new energy consumption/production model, as well as new information, transportation, ecological, credit etc model is a much more topical and consequential question nowadays for the modern democracies than all that rickety ideological skeletons of the 20th century.
I want to vote for a group of people who can free the nation of oil, not for those who can defend me from oil companies, or who can on the contrary defend oil companies from me. But neither can I delegate power to those people, nor can those people offer themselves directly to the people within the existing system. It's just an example.
The malignant detriment from this to the world most powerful democracy is none too small. The 'slippages' are reflected in a loss of feedback: American people don't always understand what to require from the Government and, even worse, how to hold the Government to its responsibilities. People in Government in turn understand that the success of their careers is not dependent on the success in service to the people's needs.
One more serious consequence from the dilapidated model is the currently observable dysfunctionality of the state political machinery itself. There's a perceptible lack of unity of the US inside itself, and a lack of the inner feedbacks that would allow the Government to restore this unity on a fundamentally new level. It may well be a great mistake on the part of Obama trying to find a compromise with a party that got COMPLETELY IDEOLOGICALLY BANKRUPT: http://pulse.yahoo.com/_CVRWNP6MUFXGNDQJO6IXYXLMHY/blog/articles/200326 

Tax-cuts reduce unemployment: it's an old conservative myth!

Actually general (universally applied) tax-cuts can easily do more harm than good in cases where they put an additional break on the redistribution of capital from developed (often big and powerful) businesses to the developing ones. But this myth is still actively sold by politicians especially conservative ones, who are traditionally in a cozy sweet relationship with huge financial and oil corporations. Idea is simple: to tell small and medium hard-working bees that they are gonna help them in order to get their votes, and then, when in power, to help even more those quasi-monopolistic dinosaurs, who fight competition by their lobbing power, and have little if any interest in intensive development and creating jobs.
To produce jobs through tax cuts you need to apply them selectively to stimulate creation of new businesses and development those in the making. The tax cuts (or breaks) must redistribute the capital flows in favor of new businesses. That's the idea. But if you cut the tax for big reach giants, incl oil companies, financial corps etc, you just allow accumulating the capital in the hands of existing entities and dry out the liquidity inflow into the new businesses. Big corporations in their turn are more often than not disinterested in increasing jobs - rather on the contrary, they, being in a state of equilibrium, try to get new technology to get rid of extra people.
Only new businesses could create new jobs, and, here the state must help.
So, you need tax more the reach, big and stable companies, and give tax breaks to new fledglings, small and average business.
Just two more points about big corporations:
1. Many people like to refer to the necessity for tax reduction for project developments even for big corporation. There is some sense in this point, but in practice more often than not this argument is used in purely demagogic way: 'Reduce our taxes forever, cos we sometimes somewhere happen to develop some projects' - that's the main undercurrent of all those talks about 'poor rich monsters' lacking enough money for their new projects. There could be one thousand and one way to help with new projects without general tax reduction (for all for everywhere), using highly particularized TAX BREAKS. A corporation first proves that it really has a project to develop and then it proves beyond the reasonable doubt that it really develops this project (its not just on paper) and than it gets back some taxes.
But let us have any illusions: in reality those 'quasi-monopolistic' giants are not inclined to spend very much on new projects in times when profits are very high. The brilliant example is the oil giant Exxon Mobile, which stopped enlargement of its reserves as soon as the oil prices sky rocketed, see: http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/JubaksJournal/IsExxonMobilsFutureRunningDry.aspx
2. In times when tax regime is soft, big corporations, with their high lobbing power, do manage to pay practically much less than small and medium business which is pretty much helpless in the face of state regulations. The same Exxon Mobile in recent times have practically paid NOTHING at all, and that in the climate of super-duper record prices for oil and super-duper profits from it too: http://thinkprogress.org/2010/04/06/exxon-tax/