By Finian Cunningham
Martin Schotz, a respected
Massachusetts-based author on the
assassination of President Kennedy,
explores the systematic basis for Cold
War logic.
February 02, 2022:
Information Clearing House
-- "
Strategic Culture Foundation -
The Cold War is back with a vengeance. The
current impasse between the United States and Russia
over the Ukraine crisis is running the risk of an
all-out war in Europe, a war that could escalate
into nuclear Armageddon. The crisis is wholly
manufactured by Washington’s geopolitical power
calculations – claims made against Russia about
planning to invade Ukraine are baseless if not
absurd. The impasse reflects an impoverishment of
diplomacy and respect for international law, and a
reckless tendency to militarize bilateral relations.
This is the manifestation of Cold War thinking,
primarily on the U.S. side.
In the following interview, Martin Schotz, a
respected Massachusetts-based author on the
assassination of President John F Kennedy, explores
the systematic basis for Cold War logic. He contends
that the United States’ political class is locked in
an entrenched Cold War mentality that serves its
hyper-militarized economy. Cold War politics
necessitates conflict and war in international
relations, which is all too clearly demonstrated by
the present crisis over Ukraine between the U.S. and
Russia.
The depth of this Cold War logic of the
accompanying national security state is illustrated
by the shocking murder of President John F Kennedy
in Dallas on November 22, 1963. His murderers and
the institutional coverup that followed were
motivated by Kennedy’s growing opposition to the
Cold War with the Soviet Union. The fact of JFK’s
murder and the systematic denial by media is an
indication of how deeply engrained Cold War thinking
is in the American political establishment. That
embedded logic explains why U.S. relations with
Russia continue to be dominated by seemingly
irrational hostility. Why do peaceful relations seem
so elusive, so relentlessly thwarted? Is it really
because of malign Russians?
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The inability of the Biden administration, or any
U.S. administration for that matter, to conduct
normal, peaceful, diplomatic relations with Russia
within the bounds of the UN Charter and
international law is down to the intransigent Cold
War logic of the American imperial state. More than
58 years after the brutal murder of Kennedy, the
imperial state persists more than ever as can be
seen in the reckless hostility by Washington towards
Moscow, as well as towards Beijing, Tehran, Havana,
Bogota and others designated as “enemies” of
presumed U.S. hegemony.
Martin Schotz co-authored the seminal
book History Will Not Absolve Us: Orwellian
Control, Public Denial, and the Murder of President
Kennedy (1996). It is widely acclaimed as a
definitive record of how and why the state murdered
Kennedy.
Schotz, MD, retired, previously practiced
psychiatry in Boston. He has a BA in Mathematics
from Carleton College, and an MD from the University
of Pennsylvania. Following training in Adult and
Child Psychiatry at Boston University Medical
Center, he was a graduate student in the University
Professors Program at Boston University. In addition
to practicing psychiatry, he is a playwright,
essayist, short story writer, and amateur jazz
drummer.
He
writes for the American Committee for
U.S.-Russia Accord, as well as Massachusetts Peace
Action. A recent
article is entitled “Understanding and Resisting
the New Cold War”.
An important
theme for Schotz is the political and societal
effects on the United States from the mass denial
that continues in relation to Kennedy’s murder. From
his 1996 book cited above is this profound insight
which is as relevant today as it ever was:
“As citizens who have turned away for thirty
years [now nearly sixty years] from the truth of the
murder of our elected head of state, we should not
be surprised that today we find our nation in
intellectual, political, and moral chaos.
Confronting the truth of President Kennedy’s
assassination and its coverup is but one small step
on a long path out of that chaos and toward healing,
a path along which we must confront the true nature
of our democracy and the reality of what our nation
has become for its own citizens and for people
throughout the world. Such a process of healing is
not pleasant. It is a difficult and painful path,
but it is a necessary one. History will not absolve
us.”
Question: You are a long-time
observer of Cold War politics between the United
States and the former Soviet Union. How would you
compare the current deterioration and tensions in
relations between the U.S.-led Western states and
Russia?
Martin Schotz: I’m afraid, if
anything, I would say matters are worse because of
the deterioration of conditions in the United
States. On the one hand, we have the ever-growing
control of the
Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Think
Tank Complex. Both major parties are wedded to the
military establishment and espouse Cold War
propaganda with little dissent. When you combine
this with the weakening influence of the liberal
establishment and the growing openly fascist
movement that combines the Republican Party and
white supremacy there seems to be tremendous
potential for instability in this country. The peace
movement, such as it is, needs to reach out for
support and allies wherever it can. And we need to
keep in mind Martin Luther King Junior’s
concept of “agape”, that is, faith in the
capacity of your enemy to be transformed.
Question: The Cold War was
supposed to have ended nearly 30 years ago with the
collapse of the Soviet Union. Why do you think it
persists three decades on in the form of fraught and
hostile relations between Washington and Moscow?
Martin Schotz: In my opinion, it
is a myth that the Cold War ended with the collapse
of the Soviet Union. The Cold War from the beginning
was always about U.S./Western hegemony. No other
system can be permitted to exist that might be an
alternative to the capitalist system. When the
Soviet Union collapsed, somehow Cuba didn’t. And
because Cuba represents another way – another
economic and political system, true national
sovereignty, etc., – the U.S. continued to demonize
Cuba and kept its embargo intact. To me, this is
evidence that the Cold War didn’t end. At the time
of the collapse of the Soviet Union, it wasn’t so
clear what direction China would be moving in. And
the Cold Warriors probably thought they might be
able to bring China into the U.S.-dominated
capitalist system. Of course, they assumed that
Russia would be part of the system with Yeltsin and
his successors. But when China decided to pursue its
own course and Russia re-emerged under Vladimir
Putin, the Cold War, which had been up to then
somewhat quiet, suddenly flared up again. There is a
quote from prominent Cold War diplomat and historian
George Kennan from the 1980s in which he deplored
the establishment’s negative view of the USSR that
could be written today. All you have to do is take
the passage and substitute “Russia” for “Soviet
Union”. Here is a long quote from Kennan’s
book The Nuclear Delusion: Soviet-American
Relations in the Atomic Age (1982):
“I find the view of the Soviet Union that
prevails today in large portions of our governmental
and journalistic establishments so extreme, so
subjective, so far removed from what any sober
scrutiny of external reality would reveal, that it
is not only ineffective but dangerous as a guide to
political action.
“This endless series of distortions and
oversimplifications; this systematic dehumanization
of the leadership of another great country; this
routine exaggeration of Moscow’s military
capabilities and of the supposed iniquity of Soviet
intentions: this monotonous misrepresentation of the
nature and the attitudes of another great people –
and a long-suffering people at that, sorely tried by
the vicissitudes of this past century; this ignoring
of their pride, their hopes – yes, even of their
illusions (for they have their illusions, just as we
have ours, and illusions too, deserve respect); this
reckless application of the double standard to the
judgment of Soviet conduct and our own, this failure
to recognize, finally, the communality of many of
their problems and ours as we both move inexorably
into the modern technological age: and the
corresponding tendency to view all aspects of the
relationship in terms of a supposed total and
irreconcilable conflict of concerns and of aims;
these, I believe, are not the marks of the maturity
and discrimination one expects of the diplomacy of a
great power; they are the marks of an intellectual
primitivism and naivety unpardonable in a great
government. I use the word naivety, because there is
the naivety of cynicism and suspicion, just as there
is the naivety of innocence.
“And we shall not be able to turn these things
around as they should be turned, on the plane of
military and nuclear rivalry, until we learn to
correct these childish distortions – until we
correct our tendency to see in the Soviet Union only
a mirror in which we look for the reflection of our
own virtue – until we consent to see there another
great people, one of the world’s greatest, in all
its complexity and variety, embracing the good with
the bad, a people whose life, whose views, whose
habits, whose fears and aspirations, whose successes
and failures, are the products, just as ours are the
products, not of any inherent iniquity but of the
relentless discipline of history, tradition, and
national experience. If we insist on demonizing
these Soviet leaders – on viewing them as total and
incorrigible enemies, consumed only with their fear
and hatred of us and dedicated to nothing other than
our destruction – that, in the end, is the way we
shall assuredly have them, if for no other reason
than that our view of them allows for nothing else,
either for them or for us.”
Question: As the author yourself
of a ground-breaking book on the assassination of
President John F Kennedy, you argue that he was
murdered by powerful U.S. state elements precisely
because Kennedy was beginning to seriously challenge
Cold War policies. Can you elaborate on some of the
peace initiatives that he was embarking on with his
Soviet counterparts?
Martin Schotz: Kennedy went
through a gradual and ultimately radical
transformation over the three years of his
presidency. He initially as a senator had made a
speech against colonialism that had raised some
eyebrows, but during the campaign for the
presidency, he seemed to be attacking Nixon from the
right. Eisenhower as he was leaving office had
warned of the growing influence of the
military-industrial complex, and once Kennedy was in
office it didn’t take long before he began to tangle
with the CIA and the military. His refusal to allow
U.S. forces to rescue the Bay of Pigs invasion of
Cuba in April 1961 was the first example. He tried
to fire Allen Dulles, the head of the CIA, over
Dulles’ deceit in the incident. But as David
Talbot’s
book on Dulles, The Devil’s Chessboard,
demonstrates in great detail Dulles in fact
continued to meet with his associates even though
Kennedy had officially removed him as director of
the agency. Then you had a little-known agreement
signed between a representative of Kennedy and a
representative of then-Soviet leader Nikita
Khrushchev known as the
McCloy-Zorin Agreement. This outlined a plan for
complete worldwide disarmament in stages. It was
brought to the UN and unanimously endorsed by the UN
General Assembly. At the time, I am not sure how
seriously Kennedy took this agreement. But you also
have at this time the private correspondence that
Kennedy and Khrushchev were conducting, which
allowed them to get a better understanding of each
other out of public view. Then you have the Cuban
Missile Crisis during October 1962. The pressure on
Kennedy to launch a war against Cuba and possibly a
first strike on the Soviet Union was enormous. But
he resisted, showing great independence, and was
able to resolve the crisis by negotiating with
Khrushchev. That crisis was a real turning point.
Kennedy saw how callous his military advisors were
to the possibility of millions of deaths in a war.
The turning point was quite radical. At this stage,
I think the McCloy-Zorin Agreement really started to
mean something. Kennedy was reportedly pressing his
aides for plans for general disarmament in stages.
Then in June 1963, you have the
American University speech. This speech was a
profound attempt on the part of the president to
start educating the American people on the subject
of world peace. To me it is perhaps the greatest
speech by an American president and the principles
articulated in that speech are universal and
eternal. Those principles of mutual peace and
coexistence, disarmament and an end to militarism,
are as relevant today as ever.
Question: You have pointed to
the bold declaration of peace by Kennedy in the
American University speech in Washington DC on June
10, 1963, as a watershed moment. In that 27-minute
address, President Kennedy talked about the pursuit
of peace and an end to futile Cold War animosity. Do
you think that was the moment he signed his own
death warrant in the eyes of U.S. political enemies?
Martin Schotz: After the speech
was delivered, Khrushchev was so impressed by it
that he had it reprinted throughout the Soviet
Union, so virtually every Soviet citizen knew about
it. That is something that needs to happen in the
United States today. Amongst other things, Kennedy
announced in the speech a moratorium on nuclear
testing in the atmosphere and followed it by
negotiating a test ban treaty. Though the U.S.
public opinion was initially solidly against the
treaty, Kennedy’s organizing and speeches won people
over and the treaty was approved by the Senate. So
you have here a leader, the president of the United
States who is really part of the establishment and
has someone like John McCloy working on the one hand
and he has Norman Cousins working with him on the
other hand. McCloy was as establishment as you can
get, and Cousins was one of the founders of the
Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy. Cousins was
Kennedy’s personal emissary between himself, Pope
John XXIII and Khrushchev. Cousins’
book, The Improbable Triumvirate, is an
important record of what was going on in 1963.
Cousins was a co-author of the American University
speech. Well, you can see what a radical turn was
being taken against the Cold War. And the CIA and
the Military establishment were not about to have
it. You know if Kennedy had been given more time and
the American people had really gotten more of a
taste for peace, a certain momentum might have
developed.
Question: The JFK assassination
is a profoundly shocking revelation of U.S. state
power; that an elected American president was
murdered by agents of the state on the grounds that
he wanted to normalize bilateral relations with the
Soviet Union and genuinely end the Cold War. Does
that shocking, brutal elimination of a U.S.
president by his own state explain why bilateral
relations have remained dominated and distorted ever
since by Cold War dogma?
Martin Schotz: Well, we not only
have the president murdered by his own national
security state, but we have the government issue an
obviously
fraudulent report, the Warren Report. We also
have the established institutions of society, the
media, the universities, and so on, they all turn
away and ignore the fact that this has happened. The
President is murdered and the government issues an
obviously fraudulent report that is accepted. What
does that say about our society? John McCloy one of
the Warren Commission members was quoted as saying:
“The primary purpose of the Warren Commission was to
prove that the United States was not a banana
republic, where a government could be changed by
conspiracy.”
Question: Was there something of
an echo of this systematic hostility when former
President Donald Trump vowed to pursue more normal
relations with Russia? His official encounters with
President Putin elicited howls of condemnation
across the U.S. media. On the surface, this
disapproval of Trump’s outreach was said to be due
to “Russiagate” and alleged Russian interference in
the U.S. 2016 presidential election, but would you
agree that it was more due to a deeper American
state intransigence simply towards any kind of
normalization of relations between Washington and
Moscow?
Martin Schotz: Nothing that
Trump says means anything as far as I am concerned.
From my point of view, he can hardly keep an idea in
his head for more than a few minutes. So I don’t
want to give him any attention. “Russiagate” was a
Democratic Party concoction that was aimed at
distracting from serious attention to how Hillary
Clinton had managed to lose to an imbecile. The real
reason for her loss was the abandonment over decades
by the Democratic Party of its working-class base.
“Russiagate”, as Putin himself said, was really a
matter of U.S. domestic politics in which Russia was
being used as a scapegoat.
Question: It seems the United
States’ modern political formation is inherently and
relentlessly driven by Cold War thinking. Russia,
China and other foreign states are designated
enemies by Washington often without credible
justification. There seems to be a permanent
ideology of hostility and war in the U.S. as a
nation-state. What are the underlying causal reasons
for this systematic mindset?
Martin Schotz: Over the years,
the U.S. economy has been increasingly militarized.
So there needs to be a narrative that justifies this
war economy and that’s what we have. Military
spending is everywhere. It is in Hollywood. It is
“defense contractors”, aka “merchants of death”,
buying congressional representatives. Then the
service that the military performs is to make the
world safe for unbridled corporate activity. It is a
very daunting problem.
Question: Do you ever see the
U.S. transcending its fixation on Cold War politics?
What needs to change to make that happen?
Martin Schotz: What needs to
happen is the political leadership coming to the
conclusion that we cannot dominate the world, that
we need the United Nations and we need international
law. Can they come to understand that none of the
problems that are facing humanity can be solved with
military weapons? It is not beyond the realm of
possibility that sanity could reign. And it is the
task of the peace movement to reach as many people
at all levels with this message.
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