Growing Numb to War

Terry H. Schwadron

April 15, 2024

That our now seemingly endless wars are numbing us should be frightening.

The reality that we were waiting for days for an expected Iranian attack on Israel with the very real possibilities to draw the rest of the world into conflict should not have been comforted by the apparent military ease with which coordinate drone attacks were swatted away by Israeli, U.S., and allied weaponry.

Even with that attack thwarted, we are hearing more talk of reprisals and counterpunches with the power of sucking us all into the building regional conflicts.  Similarly, the war in Europe constantly threatens to widen, and the military needling by China and North Korea make Asia a steady source of apprehension.

Worse, somehow, are the blithe comments, braggadocio, and war-mongering threats emanating from our U.S. politics with Republican congressmen who have resisted bills to increase military and humanitarian aid leading the charge with U.S. military strikes against Iran. As usual, remarks by Republican candidate Donald Trump that none of these attacks would have happened with him as president are so vague and boastful as to be anything but helpful.

All the while we watch a feckless United Nations Security Council dawdle over intervention because of global resistance to identifying partisan evildoers. And we see the national hate campaigns of lots of global states oozing beyond borders to affect domestic politics.

And yet, somehow the sum of all of this is to foster a sense of American isolationism and a hardening of caring about conflicts that we prefer to see as happening “over there” and not in our own back yard or among our own friends.

Increasingly, our self-imposed blindness to the spread of international tensions and the lack of awareness about dangers growing out of hand seem dangers all their own.

Shortening Cycles of War

The time between state-sponsored aggression and reprisal seems constantly to shorten.

The smartest comments heard from the pundits is that it makes almost no sense to try to sort out which military strike is the cause, and which is the effect — mostly because each side resets the clock to defend its current use of bombs and missiles to address some perceived attack in the past, whether measured by days or weeks or years.

Israel defends actions that have had widespread effect on Palestinian civilians by pointing to the horrors of the Oct. 7 attacks against unarmed Israelis; Hamas defends those very attacks as reprisal actions for years of treatment under Israeli occupation.
To defend strikes against Iranians, which funds and promotes proxy groups whose missiles and drones are just as lethal as its own, Israel and the U.S. set the reprisal clock to respond to current attacks.

The same is true between Russia and Ukraine, and in the military brush-by sequences we are seeing in the South China Sea.

It is a cycle of violence that has no end because the reprisals are retaliations against the latest retaliation to answer a previous incident.

There were significant questions about the Iranian attack altogether, including reports that Iran had told the U.S. behind the scenes that its effort would be limited, and depended on slow-moving drones that made it relatively for Israel and the U.S. to stop. And now we see Israel weighing a reprisal for the Iranian retaliation for a previous presumed Israeli strike on Iranian commanders in Damascus.  Was the Iran attack negotiated and capped ahead of time? Was the point to set up for yet another Israeli retaliation? How easily might this all slip out of control?

War and Politics

We see clearly — and rather openly these days — the lengths to which the Biden administration pursues its group-think approach to coalition-building among global allies in its effort to stop bad actors from military aggression. It appears to be hard work to keep allies equally in harness and ready to respond, but the value of a united front is clear and obvious.

The apparent danger is that nations like Russia and Iran intent on acting without restraint and that terrorist groups and pan-national rebel movements, whether in the Middle East or hidden in small cells, want the chaos of war and conflict.

Our own political discussions that insist on linking military aid and financing with issues like border enforcement are conveniently helping to kindle these acts of aggression. Forget that these bills generally aid our own defense and weapons manufacture efforts rather than sending cash overseas, the need for winning electoral politics seems to, er, trump even the fear of widening war.

What seems evident is that Biden believes in coalitions, including NATO, and Trump is insistent on an isolationist American island that he is willing to let alliances slide or disappear. Biden thinks of foreign policy as work; Trump seems to consider it a combination of PR, personal relations with leaders even if dictators, and situational deals that can only work if they help his own or America’s business interests.

If it all were not so dangerous, we might be able to see the difference as ludicrous.

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