Here is a long bamboo and here is a short one Ts’ui-wei Zen Master
Many western thinkers find it difficult to understand that war and peace are the same. This is because in dualistic thinking there are only two ‘opposite’ words to describe a broader thing for which there is no single word. This dualism and is a clear example of how words determine thoughts, in the same way that roads define journeys.
Consider this koan; when there is no war and no peace, what is there?
In order to construct a bridge that combines the extremes of ‘war ‘ and ‘peace’, one needs to use a phrase which is a paradox; a statement that contradicts itself. The concept of ‘soft war’ for instance, opens a whole new spectrum of possibilities around the ideas of ‘non-violence’. War has historically been the option used by humans to solve disagreements between ‘tribes’. At a higher level of consciousness however, it is possible to achieve the same ends without firing a single arrow. So let us look more closely at this paradox.
I propose a definition of soft war as, ‘the acquisition of state assets and benefits by peaceful means.’ Because surely, state violence as a means to an end should be far behind us in this twenty first century. Nobody has ever really won a war, when you study world history.
Presently, various state players are heading off to the moon. The initial batch of astronauts will need to be real estate agents, taking photographs and writing up a hot and cold, air-less deserted blob, as enticingly as they can for prospective nation clients.
Donald Trump pronounced publicly the creation of the United States Space Force as a department of the Air Force when he was President. Apart from the odd logic of the Air Force fighting in places with no air, one intention is clearly to use violence to acquire lunar assets and benefits for the United States of America. At least this time round there will be no natives and Buffalo to slaughter; assuming they are not hiding on the far side of the moon.
Will a World Space Peace Treaty be conceived before star wars break out?
There is some optomism in the idea that many people no longer believe in using violence to solve problems. An example of this common sense are the students presently demonstrating on the lawns of Columbia University in New York, in sympathy with the oppressed Palestinian people. The compelling argument for such a new vision is that when war became ‘industrial’, it became toxic; nuclear, radiological, biological and chemical.
Loving life and hating killing machines does not imply hating any particular racial or religious group as some oponents argue.
In the sixteenth century soldiers used to dress up in smart uniforms, line up in ranks or ships and shoot each other. Nasty but consensual. Since the ‘industrial’ methods of war emerged in the twentieth century, the victims of war largely became non-consensual civilians. Whole cities were flattened without recourse to any apparent ethical imperative and since it’s use in the second World War, this tactic has been repeated in countries like Vietnam, Lybia, Georgia, Iraq, Syria, Ukraine and now Gaza. Industrial War uses attrition of the civilian population as a means to an end. I will suggest somewhat optimistically, that these examples are the last batch of evil against humanity by humanity. Because there is an alternative and it is called ‘soft war’.
Peace does not mean peace. In ‘peacetime’ some level of pan national aggression is taking place but in secret. Most States use this means in ‘peacetime’ to subvert other States. After the second World War this was called a ‘Cold War’. In the USSR long term strategies were initiated to acquire more States. This I describe in my blog called ‘The World is Spinning Out of Control’ published on 14th December 2022. To save you looking back,
I list the Soviet’s four stages of this process from ‘demoralisation’ to ‘destabilisation’ to ‘crisis’ to ‘normalisation’. In the 2020’s we are well into the ‘crisis’ era. Putin’s Russia in my view is just the USSR Lite.
For those who think the recent Covid 19 Sars 2 pandemic was a spontaneous health crisis, hopefully they have modified their view based on the hindsight of the evidence since then. I strongly believe the pandemic was a dress rehearsal in which future governments control populations against their will. China displayed this more blatantly than most other countries because that is what communism is good at. If you wonder why free thinking democracies used ‘lock down’ and ‘tracking’ contrary to their sacred principle personal freedom, we need to think beyond the official simplified narrative.
Control by governments of their citizens historically, used to be by the threat of force (Iran and other autocracies excepted) but there are more subtle althernatives. Money has always ‘made the world go round’ and soft war uses money as a primary tool. The application of sanctions by one nation over another is a slow process that puts pressure on populations long before governments are persuaded to change an offending policy. Presently all eyes are on digital currencies. As they transfer the power of purchase from governments to individuals, many state leaders are preparing national digital currencies. Once governments acquire control of their own population’s money, they are all powerful. No money, no dinner.
There are many other ways to bring populations to ‘crisis’ and it is happening now in ever increasing degrees. China is producing chemicals that make artificial opioids and flooding America with fentanyl; something the CCCP deny. Vast numbers of America citizens are now addicted to fentanyl. This drug is so harmful that President Biden has just signed off a law called the ‘Fend Off Fentanyl Act’.
Covertly undermining the health-hospitals-production-tax revenue, of nations using viruses and addictive harmful drugs is a clear example of ‘soft war’. In a liberal society, public safety measures and permitting populations the freedom to experience pleasure from drugs (legalising cannabis for instance), might be welcomed but the reality is frightening.
Even prescribed drugs can have a similar effect if delivered in large enough quantities, such as in a pandemic. ‘Excess deaths’ in the nations who licenced untested mRNA vaccines, have been inexplicably and worryingly high since 2020. Governments are not looking too deeply into why this has happened which raises a natural suspicion of what was really going on and why.
These are both perfect examples of ‘soft war’. In psychological terms they are ‘passive aggressive’ techniques producing a collective irrational fear of a problem such as disease. Humans are easy to ‘destabilise’ from their preferred condition of ‘tranquillity’ because we are not good at thinking. If we were, why would we ever put on a uniform and go off the commit a genocidal war, as thousands of Israeli’s are doing at this time? They who were the ‘prisoners’ in Nazi Germany are now the ‘guards’ in what they have left of Palestine. And if you do not understand this reference have a look at the ‘Stanford Prison Experiment’ on Wikipedia. Humans are easy to manipulate so that they think they are doing good when the opposite is the case. Not only the victims are manipulated but the oppressors too. The snake chases it’s tail.
The growing phenomenon of mass movements of refugees and economic migrants by legal and illegal means, is impossible to control. Mass movement of people over open borders into populations that are not welcoming, is both the product of complex factors such as climate change and, one must suspect, deliberate crisis creation to subvert sovereign states. The sight of governments arguing vehemently over migration such as within the European Union, brings much satisfaction to those who desire to covertly divide and conquer.
Who could be doing this? Well, The World Economic Forum for instance are notorious for stating ‘you will own nothing and you will be happy’. The clue is in their title…’World’. The World Health Organisation has likewise produced a plan that takes away a sovereign states right to decide how to protect the health of their own populations in a pandemic. The WHO will make the decisions for them;
“Member States of the World Health Organization have agreed to a global process to draft and negotiate a convention, agreement or other international instrument under the Constitution of the World Health Organization to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.” source: WHO website posting 23 June 2023
These and other soft war players do indeed have the world in their sights. Events such as climate change and the destruction of eco-systems worldwide will enable gaining assets and benefits of self serving ‘entities’, by non-violent means. Clearly, blaming the apparently uncontrollable ( such as ‘nature’ ) is a convincing way of cloaking covert methods of destabilising nation states. Despite well meaning conservation projects, humans have never intended to protect nature and it’s processes that support life on earth. If they had, action would have been taking place to stop it decades ago, in the same way that tobacco companies would have stopped selling cigarettes decades ago, if they had wanted to.
At the centre of all this complexity is the individual human. How can they be expected to understand the deep state and hidden cabals. Most humans are well behind the future curve of our species preferring life as it is. The ‘activist’ minority are also prey to covert manipulation. Instead of raising the roof to stop being cynically manipulated, activist groups, for instance, protest against the slavery of the nineteenth century, whilst ignoring modern slavery. There are those who complain against the loss of ‘black lives’ in the USA, whilst ignoring the supply of American made weapons and the killing of thousands in Haiti, on America’s doorstep. In fact there are racially predudicially discriminationing inspired genocides and pogroms all around the world in present time. But our anger against these is re-directed towards historical injustice and horrors, like the holocaust. History is as an oppurtunity to learn and forgive if we wish to keep our sanity. I cannot be responsible for the sins of my father, only my own.
Such shingle issue civil rights campaigners may not be fully aware of who has started and funded their organisations and what the true motives of their benefactors are. ‘Destabilisation’ and ‘crisis’ are easily achieved by creating well meaning protest movements that actual don’t make sense when the right questions are asked. Investigative journalists used to cover these stories but today their editors pull their punches and a good question is ‘why’?
It is apparently all to easy to get into the heads and their hearts of people and this is the most subtle and worrying aspect of soft war. As Artificial Intelligence looms menacingly, waiting to take over from heart centred humans, humans need to keep strict intellectual, rule based, control. War is increasingly being delivered by anonymous robots such as drones and unpiloted aircraft, in order that no service personnel are hurt and responsibility can be denied.
In a non-ethical, world ‘robot wars’ could be seen as the summit of success by those who believe violence within a species justifies the end.
And yet, ‘ethical concerns’ can ironically also become a cloak to disguise the overpowering of other states by non-violent means. China has displayed a mastery of this over the recent decades. It has used it’s massive wealth to enter foreign countries in Africa and around the world, offering to construct major infrastructure and lending poor nations the money to do it. When the port or whatever is completed, after a while, the other country finds it cannot repay the interest on the loan. China then offers to purchase the port or other project and completes it’s own agenda of using the port for commercial and military dominance.
This process has the same effect of acquiring the assets and benefits of another country in an apparently benign way. Indeed, it might be ethical if China did not ultimately intend to use these assets for military purposes. Looking at the size and sophistication of the Chinese Air, Land, Sea and Space Forces, it becomes obvious that such force will one day be used in offence.
Russia is expanding (against ‘genocide in Georgia’ and ‘Nazis’ in Ukraine so all ‘legal’) in the same way. Their sights are also on the last great continent to be developed, Africa. By implanting mercenaries and aid into African countries to stabilised them. They are welcomed as many such as have become disillusioned with help from other states such as in French ex-colonies, like Niger.
War has not yet been perceived as moribund. In the same way that Chinese Shaolin monks learn martial arts that are completely ineffective against any firearm, so modern states display out of date weapons in their annual parades. Even the mighty aircraft carriers require a fleet to defend them from innovative methods of attack such as supersonic cruise missiles. The loss of a carrier to any nation would be catastrophe and their production and use, certainly under an ‘America First’ government, is a paper dragon. It is not likely to frighten those who know all about dragons.
Can we conclude that neither open violence nor passive aggression are acceptable in an peaceful world? The alternative was conceived by such historical world leaders as Mahatma Gandhi; to simply use the protest power of the people to alter harmful government policies.
In my view what is needed to stabilise human society before it spins out of control, is an axis of ethical commitment that is so strong it will prevent the world from wobbling. What that will be, we await to see but I expect it will involve, people centred leadership and a universal, spiritually inspired set of values.
You choose
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