Artic Antics, Revanchism and a Democratic Left Foreign Policy

I know little about Greenland or US policies towards it. Apparenly, somehow acquiring or influencing Greenland is a longstanding issue for Trump, per my new go-to place for Artic news, Artic Today. I don’t like the idea of ugly Americans in Greenland and certainly support its self-determination, but am enough of a patriot to be fearful of Russia or China taking over the Thule air base. And enough of a democratic socialist to have what Michael Walzer has called a democratic left foreign policy.

In search of a valuble source for understanding this possible flash point in superpower conflict between the US, Russia, China, and the EU/Denmark, I wonder if there are other sources? Wait, the EU a superpower? China?

China might quite lamely deny they are a superpower, China, with the full agreement of apologists for China within the US far left, who say there is a halo over China’s nation emblem. I disagree: beneath the Communist veneer of the PRC is the same kind of Han nationalism and totalitarian “ideological” patriarchy as there was Serbian nationalism behind Yugoslav communism (disguised by Tito being Croatian) and Russian nationalism behind Soviet communism (disguised by Stalin being a Georgian), and Sunni Arab nationalism behind the Baathist regime of Hussein. At least, this has long been my view.

Sadly, I must now also conclue that behind the veneer of “peace with strength” of Reagan was a creeping and growing Christian nationalism that is now close to total state power in the USA under Trump. These are all ideological/ethnic versions of the same kind of Totalitarian Theocratic Patriarchal Power Broker phenomenon about which I wrote in my initial essay on that topic.

As for the EU, no one has every thought of it as a superpower, and in the recent Carlson/Witkoff interview, the EU was treated as a toothless joke. Wikipedia refers to the EU as a “supranational political and economic union of 27 member states,” but there exists a European nuclear power body https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euratom and there is a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organization_for_Security_and_Co-operation_in_Europe and there is a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Security_and_Defence_Policy There is a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Defence_Agency. No there is not EU miliary; that is a right wing myth, nor does the world need more such military alliances. There is a tiny bit of evidenc there is a growing German militarism; I’m not buying it, it just has the same kind of growing profit-hungry military arms producers as other nations. And, of course, Britain and France cling to their nuclear weapons—which I argued in the Cleveland Plain Dealer in 2015 should go into the dustpin along with those of India and Pakistan—in order to pave the way to complete nuclear disarmament.

In fact, this US peacenik—who has little more than what CUSSW Professor Alfred Kahn reportedly and respectfully called a “world view”—would prefer to be able to focus on my research in Ohio and on global human needs.

But as I say and have recenty spoken twice (Dover, 2024, 2025), “no peace no justice.” All you have to do is watch the Netflix series Borgen: Power and Glory —in the vain hope to to escape reality—to have the reality of superpower conflict over Greenland come into one’s consciousness.

My view of the far flung military bases of the US, like the one in Diego Garcia and in Greenland, is that NATO should admit Russia and China and agree to nuclear disarmament. The whole kit and caboddle should transform their militaries into an one that does little more than assist with natural disasters and be available to serve as a Section VII force, available to serve in response to UN Security Council approved actions to response to genocides and invasions. Imagine if, after the 911 attack, Russia, the US and China and not just the lesser NATO had responded jointly.

Think such joint action is impossible? Take the Kuwait example. When Iraq invaded Kuwait—the Soviet Union demanded the UN form a Section VII force, only to have it finally agree to allow it to be a UN-authorized international coalition. With a Section VII force, Hussein would have “blinked” and withdrawn. But he was able to pose as an anti-imperialist and snub his nose at the US. This was the first example of the revanchism which has now poisoned the globe.

I have been planning a “beat” on revanchism in preparation for an essay, and this little peace on Artic Antics is helping me realize the importance of this, fueled by the use of the term recently by Bill Fletcher, Jr.

Counterfactually, would the Balkans wars and ethnic cleansing taken place if the UN had acted in the the Iraq/Kuwait conflict? I think not. I think that many if not most of the world’s subsequent wars and genocides might have been avoided. Where is all went wrong might the titled of a piece I have long wanted to write. What I mean, of course, is where it all went wrong since the Vietnam war, the Chinese invasion of Vietnam, and so forth. The Section VII action to defend South Korea was of course not the best example of its potential, although IF Stone’s book to the contrary, we now know that Stalin literally ordered Kim Il Song to attack the south; so much for Soviet peaefullness, and of course Mao then entered the fray. I once asked, why no peace dividend? I guess I’m still asking that question.

And I still have nothing but a newsletter article, a conference presentation and a long paper for Michael Kennedy and a draft proposal for Howard Kimeldorf—on the question of globalization and cold war—to show for what was to be my dissertation, one which would have been completed just as Mary Dudziak’s Cold War Civil Rights was published. I yearn, somehow, to return to my historical sociology.