First, let’s be clear about what “shared security” is. A recent definition comes from the “Shared Security” program now being run by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC): “Shared security is a new paradigm for promoting the safety and well-being of people throughout the world. It is based on the simple understanding that shared problems require shared solutions, and that our interests are best served when we foster peaceful and just relationships and protect the natural resource we all depend on.” Many specific examples of AFSC’s methods and successes in creating “shared security” in countries around the world can be found at “Shared Security.”.

The same goal inspires the work of two other organizations I’d like to spotlight here.  World Beyond War publishes a comprehensive annual overview of what a truly war-free global security system would look like. It includes efforts being made to create it now by a variety of stakeholders as well. The latest edition is A Global Security System: Alternative to War (2017). Then there is the inclusive peace-building program described (and costed!) in Scilla Elworthy’s recent book, The Business Plan for Peace: Building a World Without War. She is a distinguished, longtime peace builder at very high levels, as well as the founder of Peace Direct. Peace Direct specializes in “funding, promoting, and learning from local peace-builders in conflict areas.” It’s the manifestation of Scilla’s main premise: peacebuilding begins at home. For almost every point she makes in her book, there is a concrete example of real peace-building action, at every level. (1)

All of these sources offer deep proof that shared security works a lot better than war to provide what people really need, including safety and jobs. As for the special case of preemptive war, recent U.S. history provides glaring examples of the way that tactic in particular can go devastatingly wrong:Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq. (Bolton’s often stated idea that we could fix Iraq and the Middle East by launching yet another preemptive Iraq war is a classic case of setting out to dig faster and deeper when you are already trapped in a hole!)

But can the idea of “shared security” work in a world in where great power rivalries, particularly between the U.S. and Russia and China, are getting newly pushy? What about North Korea, a newly fledged nuclear power, flexing its young muscles now? Obviously, preemptive strikes against any of these players would be extraordinarily stupid and dangerous.  But what about other kinds of military response, say to the regional conflicts now boiling over—Syria, Yemen, and so on?  A different kind of comprehensive answer to all of these questions comes from what might be considered an unusual source for me: The January 27, 2018 Issue of The Economist. Their special report on The Future of War reviews in important detail the new kinds of weapons, war-fighting strategies, and war plans that are now the cutting edge . The gist of The Economist’s survey is that even all-out conventional war and the weapons designed for it are rapidly evolving toward automation and robotic control. This trend includes the certainty of weapons that can make their own decisions about whom and when to kill, independent of human oversight. In tandem with this development comes the same kind of high tech innovation in nuclear weapons technology.

To sum up the point of The Economist’s special report on the future of war, the risk of accidental conventional war, as well of accidental nuclear war, is now racing further ahead of human arrangements and decision making than ever. Moreover, as Daniel Ellsberg makes clear in the introduction to his recent book, The Doomsday Machine, even with the reductions in nuclear weapons stocks we’ve had over recent years, a single great power nuclear exchange  would destroy all life on this planet: omnicide in short. Ellsberg points out that because of the way both the U.S. and Russia have delegated their response to missile launches widely, that outcome is inevitable, even from a single missile launch by either side. Moreover, it has long been official policy to keep this fact from both the  public, lawmakers, and even presidents.

But the Economist’s report doesn’t just stop with a warning about the risks of accidental war. It also includes an important analysis of exactly how Russia, China, and N. Korea are themselves carefully avoiding any appearance of preemptive strike by a set of civilian plus low grade military strategies nicknamed “hybrid warfare,”  plus the more familiar “salami tactics,” slicing a little off at a time, like a sausage.  Difficult to deal with as these tactics are, they are still firmly situated in a relatively low grade tit for tat kind of potential equilibrium. This situation is better dealt with by non-military measures like sanctions and other “diplomatic” pressures. (Of course, we’d have to restore our State Department to full functioning for that to really work!) Compared to what our potential opponents are doing, the ham-handed U.S. National Security Strategy released in November 2017 looks like a “cut off your nose to spite your face” loser’s throwback to the 1950’s. As reported by Professor Michael Klare, the plan imagines that we can keep or regain global dominance today by selling off all of our own fossil fuel resources. This is a move guaranteed to put us at the mercy of both our antagonists and throw away back-up fossil fuel supplies we might need if our necessary transition to a renewable energy economy stalls.(2) All just to put  money in fossil fuel cabal pockets, it seems, not to create any real U.S. national security.

The final conclusion of The Economist’s report is sobering. Given the incalculable risks of today’s new war-fighting technologies , great power negotiations to create a new form of shared security are vital for humanity and our ecosphere. The last chapter of The Doomsday Machine also contains Daniel Ellsberg’s recommendations for a program to reduce our nuclear risk, starting now. But before you throw up your hands in despair, given the international rivalries we face now and the current government of the U.S., let me point something out to those too young to recall it. A lot happened in  the anti-nuclear, anti-Reagan “Star Wars,” anti-cold war struggle of the 1980’s and 1990’s. As a veteran of that struggle, I sometimes feel a strong sense of déjà vu when I hear talk of “battlefield nukes” or “space as a war-fighting arena” today. This is an old movie, and it’s where I personally came in during the spring of 1981. And I also know that we saw amazing, unexpected things happen during those two decades.  Events and changes brought an end to the Iron Curtain control of Eastern Europe, the destruction of the Berlin Wall, and the end of the Cold War. These were changes we didn’t even expect when we started organizing. (We responded to the new levels of government insanity then, because as American citizens, it was just who we were, unable to just sit back and take it.) The changes I mentioned above were in part the result of a mushrooming grass roots U.S. peace movement , combined with a strong, unofficial grass roots citizen diplomacy campaign. (Detailed accounts of these stories can be found in the work of David Cortright and accounts of the Citizen Diplomacy initiatives of that era.)

But just a few stories here will give the flavor of those times. The first Bay Area Citizen Diplomacy trip to the U.S.S.R. featured private citizens carrying pictures of their grandchildren to show to ordinary Russian people on the street. The first man they approached who ignored his mother’s political fears to actually look at the photos marked the beginning of the end of the Cold War. Then there was the moment at the S.F. Masonic Auditorium when the Beyond War group of that era collaborated with the U.S. branch and the Soviet branches of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) and some Silicon Valley innovators to create a “space bridge” event. During the presentation, the American audience could see the Soviet audience (with a slight time lag), and after a tense moment, the Soviets began to respond to the Americans waving at them with their own waves back (after the president of the Soviet IPPNW group led by waving back.)

My last story is about what happened when the Soviet bureaucrats we sponsored and funded on return citizen diplomacy visits to the U.S. were taken to the Marina Safeway (a particularly opulent branch in San Francisco.)They would ask us,”Who can come in here?” In the U.S.S.R. at that time, only the most high-ranking political elites would be able to go into a store like that. Our answer? “Anyone.” That was it, I believe. The Marina Safeway was the real winner of the Cold War, at least in our area! As there were U.S. Citizen Diplomacy initiatives like this happening all over the U.S., there must be many stories like that one.

Yes, all the great powers, the U.S. included, need to get serious about developing a new “shared security” regime at every level, but they will only do it when the people start pushing for it from below. Divided and distracted as Americans are now by economic inequality among all the other outrages of the day, we must still start a new push for a safer international community. The marches to protest gun violence were a good start. We must take the next steps now. Today more than ever, “#shared security works” and “#preemptive war fails.”
Susan C. Strong, Ph.D., is the Founder and Executive Director of The Metaphor Project, http://www.metaphorproject.org,  and author of our new book, Move Our Message: How to Get America’s Ear.  The Metaphor Project has been helping progressives mainstream their messages since 1997. Follow Susan on Twitter @SusanCStrong.

Notes:

General Comment re our new Syrian strikes:  Immediate responses to the latest U.S. air strikes on Syria should include a demand that the Senate delay confirmation of Pompeo until they get a firm commitment from the Administration to seek congressional authority before any further expansion of the war. . Beyond that, there will be a chorus of war-hawks out there claiming that sanctions don’t work and diplomacy fails. True, these measures are slow to work, but in the end they matter, because they keep open the hope of successful negotiation. War, whether preemptive or conventional, fails to work today for getting anything we want. The reality now is a more general kind of asymmetric “warfare:” Guerillas, hybrid tactics like those described in my article, and savvy alliance building such as the new Turkey-Iran-Russia compact re Syrias make a mockery of all-out war as a solution. All you get from that is destruction, rebellion, radicalization, and a thirst for revenge from those attacked. Plus all the other well-known downsides of war, including coffins coming home.  It’s the loser’s way to lose even more.

(1) If anyone asks you how measures like the ones described in the body of the blog above can stop the many terrorist groups active worldwide, point out that these groups are fueled by injustice, the international arms trade, and foreign money. Action at every level to stop all of those flows, injustice, arms, and money, can go a long way toward reducing the amount of terrorist activity everywhere. Particular examples of success in doing this work can be found in all of these sources, but especially in Scilla Elworthy’s book and her Peace Direct reports.

(2) Of course, such a strategy is also national insecurity madness, given the climate change impact of it. Right now it’s being reported that the Gulf Stream “conveyer belt” is slowing, with predictable damage to Europe’s climate and crops, as well as to our own East Coast fisheries.

That finding suggests to me that the “One Big Family” frame is alive and kicking in the grass roots. And I have some other kinds of proof too. (2)  But let’s start with a closer look at the One Big Family frame itself. Here’s what I first wrote about it in 2005:

“The story of this Extended Family frame also implies a specific, historical American way of communal problem solving–nationally the operative descriptive words were ‘bipartisan,’ ‘pragmatic,’ ‘solution-oriented,’ ‘common sense,’ ‘practical’ ‘pulling together,’ ‘teamwork,’ many of which also apply at the local level, as does ‘community building, ‘ ‘finding common ground,’ ‘problem solving,’ and so on.

The most important thing about this ‘one big family’ frame is exactly this way people focus on real problem solving together, looking at what really works and what doesn’t, emphasizing what they agree on (saving public money, for example), having a shared goal they work for even if their reasons for wanting the result differ, working out a ‘rough consensus,’ yes, compromising here and there if the potential results are worth it, tolerating each other’s differences as part of the traditional American respect for variety, individuality, and difference of views.

A vital part of this frame is also the way it acknowledges that we all hold, at least in principle, the same set of basic American Public Moral Values– fairness, honesty, equal opportunity, democracy, freedom, and compassion–drawn from both religious and secular ethics.” (3)

Except for replacing the word “compromise” with either “collaborate” or ” cooperate,” this portrait of grass roots America is still true. Of course, we did and still do have two very different family models at the extremes, Lakoff’s strict father conservative family type and the liberal or progressive nurturant parent type. But he himself is the first to say that many people still have both models in their repertoire–the “biconceptuals” or “persuadables.” Indeed, as the Pew Center studies suggest, there is even more range in views out there than when Lakoff first identified the two models in the 1990’s.

All well and good you might say, but how can grass roots activists use this information to help get our country back on the right track, for all of today’s urgent issues? If some politicians are having trouble figuring out how to reach the variety of views out there, as Pew suggests, how can we? Of course, we progressives will continue to lobby, march, and engage in nonviolent resistance in support of our concerns. But if we are going to get serious critical mass in support of smarter public policy, we need to reach out further and deeper at the grass roots level too. We must strongly challenge the assumption that “we the people” are really that divided, using some of the Pew statistics above. Grass roots Americans have been scared off talking to each other by the noise made by media figures, politicians, and commentators. The people need to be reminded that we Americans still share many important values. And they need proof that they can still safely talk with each other about our problems.

And there is proof. It comes from the documented work of a relatively new group called Living Room Conversations  (LRC) founded by Joan Blades and Debilyn Molineaux.They realized that if they could bring people with differing views together for private conversations in a comfortable living room in someone’s home, it might help. They went on to create a safe, structured process that helps guide conversation.  Participants are able to discuss a wide range of subjects in constructive ways, topics like criminal justice, mental health, and childhood trauma. (See their website for suggestions about how to lead conversations about energy, immigration, money in politics, crony capitalism and much more.) Their model has been adapted at the community and state level as well.  Using it, people have found common ground by really listening to each other’s viewpoint and experience.   Being respectful about the language they use is a big part of the project’s success too.

People who have tried Living Room Conversations are very enthusiastic about it—everyone from a conservative Tea Party leader to a leader of independent voters says that it’s the kind of grass roots conversation our country really needs. The work LRC is doing confirms for the grass roots level what Ralph Nader asserted in his recent book,Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State. Underneath the media megaphones and political opportunists of the Right, there is a core of common sense Americans who want real solutions to our problems.  Of course, Nader was talking about Congress, and right now curing them seems like a pipe dream. But the Right always goes too far, and this new Congress is on course to make a lot of Americans absolutely furious. Starting right now, this is a huge opportunity to promote respectful grass roots, bottom up dialogue about how we can really solve our problems in this country.   It would be great to see this kind of process go viral, in more and more real grass roots places.

Of course, I know this kind of organizing is not what we on the left usually do. But if the co-founder of MoveOn can do it, so can the rest of us. Living Room Conversations and other citizen activation projects like it are important ways to feed the kind of deep, wide, powerful river of citizen re-engagement we desperately need.(4)

Susan C. Strong, Ph.D., is the Founder and Executive Director of The Metaphor Project and author of our new book, Move Our Message: How to Get America’s Ear. The Metaphor Project has been helping progressives mainstream their messages since 1997. Follow Susan on Twitter @SusanCStrong.

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1. http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-american-public/,
   http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/26/the-political-typology-beyond-red-vs-blue/ ,
   http://www.people-press.org/2014/12/11/few-see-quick-cure-for-nations-political-divisions/2. This essay includes and expands on the content of my recent TEDxVail talk at the Vilar Center in Beaver Creek, CO, on 1.09.15, entitled “How Speaking American Can Help Save America.”
2. The original essay is available in my book, Move Our Message: How to Get America’s Ear, and also on our website at https://metaphorproject.org/our-one-big-family-frame/.
3. Among the many other groups working on the partisan war problem are the following: http://www.co-intelligence.org/(see the links section on this site), http://allsides.com/, http://mediatorsfoundation.org/?s=Transpartisan+Projects, https://www.future500.org/ ,   http://www.culturalevolution.org/ , and http://reinventors.net/ (search for transpartisan videos).

Why the emphasis on “today” or “now?” Because one of the most important aspects of a changed national security effort is that today the world has changed—the worldwide web and modern transportation have in fact changed the world into a global village. So how do people/nations behave most successfully in a small village? They follow some common sense rules: they “demonstrate responsible leadership, work cooperatively with others, respect the rule of law, help others in need, protect the place in which everyone lives (in this case our planet), and choose peaceful solutions to conflicts as often as possible.” (1) This simple statement of rules for nations to live by just happens to come from a recent pamphlet called Shared Security: Reimagining U.S. Foreign Policy,jointly published in 2013 by the Friends Committee on National Legislation and the American Friends Service Committee. But these rules are in essence exactly the same ones proposed by another, very different Washington policy document, one that comes from the D.C. world of national security analysts.

That document is titled A National Strategic Narrative, published by the Woodrow Wilson Institute in 2011, and authored by “Mr. Y,” a pseudonym for Capt. Wayne Porter and Col. Mark “Puck” Mykleby, USMC, who were actively serving military officers at the time. These gentlemen employ a lot more classic American framing and “Beltway speak” in their version of this simple proposal. But they too warn of dire consequences if the U.S. does not change course about seeing “national security” as a purely military matter. In fact, Shared Security cites the “Mr. Y” document in its own bibliography. Both documents share a common premise: the time is ripe now for rethinking what American national security is and how we get it.

Of course, both of these documents pre-date the latest explosion of new knowledge about aggressive NSA spying. They don’t reflect new information about the NSA’s forthcoming code-breaking supercomputer that can breach every “secure” https ever created.(2) The two documents I’ve cited above also preceded the current level of critique, both at home and abroad, of U.S. war-proxy drone attacks. New information is now available about not-so-reliable, way too general, and far too remote NSA drone targeting info that does kill the innocent. (3)

But the rules of successful behavior in a village have remained the same, no matter how much military and spy tactics have recently changed. Humans had many millennia to work these out and move beyond whatever came before them, though new primate and anthropological research suggests we have always succeeded better by cooperating than by competing. More recently in the history of our species we’ve learned that dueling and blood feuds are extremely stupid ways to settle conflicts. Over time we can and do change our ideas about what kind of violence “works”, and it’s time for another big shift in this department, because it is increasingly clear that war, threats of war, preparing for war, mega-spying and war-proxy drone attacks really don’t “work” anymore. (4) They don’t bring us the results we planned. They are also counterproductive. They produce “blowback,” or “boomerang” effects far in excess of the original insult or attack, whatever it was. In addition, they lead to an explosion of new folks filled with rage and the desire for revenge. That decreases, rather than increases our national security–it actually goes “down.”

On the other hand, peace-building steps help us retreat safely from the brink of conflict, which makes our national security “go up.” This is especially true in situations like the current Ukraine-Russian crisis, which carries the risk of armed confrontation between major, nuclear-armed powers. Moreover, globally, as the number of resource conflicts brought on by climate change increases, we are going to have to figure out new peaceable ways of “just getting along” with each other. For example, the coming conflicts over water resources or arable land don’t have to lead to violence. Cooperative solutions have worked, even among those not known for being too friendly with each other. Shared Security cites some very interesting examples of peaceable water sharing between India and Pakistan (Indus Waters Treaty), in Central Asia, Africa, and also Central America.(5)  I’m sure an honest bit of research could turn up a lot more examples of rational, common sense sharing even among potential foes.

Ultimately, that’s exactly what it’s about: learning to share and build or rebuild trust. Either we figure out how to coexist peacefully on this planet or we are going to flame out fast. That would definitely cause our national security to go “down,” long before the end.  Another place to start rebuilding the peace is by halting obsessive mega-spying on our own citizens, Congress, as well as others around the globe. These actions destroy every bit of trust we have that our liberty, our civil rights, our finances, and even our medical records, are safe from the risk of unscrupulous security breaches by unknown parties. Trust is what has always held human communities together, no matter what their size, scale, or character. Lose community trust, and our security goes way, way down. It’s very clear: in every possible way: the “NSA – military corporations” axis has “gone too far,” as we Americans say. They are actually making our real security “go down.”  It’s time to stop them.

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Susan C. Strong, Ph.D., is the Founder and Executive Director of The Metaphor Project,http://www.metaphorproject.org,  and author of our new book, Move Our Message: How to Get America’s Ear.  The Metaphor Project has been helping progressives mainstream their messages since 1997. Follow Susan on Twitter @SusanCStrong.

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Notes: 

l. Shared Security: Reimagining U.S. Foreign Policy, available online, p.19.

2. See NSA Seeks to Build Quantum Computer That Could Crack Most Types of Encryption

3. See “The Dangerous Seduction of Drones,” by Medea Benjamin

4. See David Swanson, War No More: The Case for Abolition, and also his new “World Beyond War” website

5. p. 18.

Whatever his real, behind the scenes reasons may be, we the people must deal with the issue in the way it is being framed for the public. Because Congress decides next week whether or not to authorize military action, Washington needs to hear that we want much better ways of dealing with any and all Syrians using poison gas.

The biggest challenge for us now is finding succinct ways to say that in ways our leaders can hear. Americans always like “to do things better.” Already there are a lot of detailed, well-researched proposals for how to better enforce international law re this particular use of poison gas. See http://fcnl.org/issues/middle_east/Syria_Leave_Behind_for_GR_-_Maiya_9.5.13.pdf for a one page handout in simple language, and the home page at http://www.fcnl.org for in-depth alternatives, plus tools for lobbying, op-ed writing and so on.

Beyond that level, “better” should also include the U.S. leading a breakthrough to new international norms for dealing with war criminals. If we want other countries to obey international law, we must model that ourselves. We are the people who believe in the rule of law, in democracy, in civilian-led law and order, aren’t we? No other countries or peoples in the world approve of poison gas. So far the world is with us, and it is time for Mr. Obama to listen to the people of the world about what to do next. The moment Dwight D. Eisenhower predicted has come. He said,” I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of their way and let them have it.”

I know President Obama has just said he has heard about alternatives, and they don’t impress him. But maybe he and our Congress need to hear again what we have to say:

• We can do better than bombs! Change course, Mr. Obama!  
• Change course, Mr. Obama! Bombs backfire!

Susan C. Strong, Ph.D., is the Founder and Executive Director of The Metaphor Project,  and author of our new book, Move Our Message: How To Get America’s Ear.  The Metaphor Project has been helping progressives mainstream their messages since 1997. Follow Susan on Twitter @SusanCStrong.

Unexpected progress on the gun violence issue, plus the drubbing the G.O.P. took in the 2012 election, have actually opened up a new chapter in our American story. One of the reasons the Republicans lost the presidency was they didn’t pay enough attention to the “one big family” frame; now suddenly they are talking immigration reform and passing the Violence Against Women Act. Young members of their party are also urging them to drop the social conservatism of being against gay marriage or other longtime “social control” hobby horses they’ve ridden for years.

In fact, there is nothing more urgent than using the current belt-tightening, ideology-changing moment to focus on the nuclear issue. We’re worried about guns? Well, the biggest, most dangerous, and most fiscally wasteful guns of all, are the ones cocked and ready to blow up our planet—nukes deployed and on alert. We still have 1500 nuclear strategic weapons deployed at the ready, with another 5000 operational and 5000 more available on the shelf. The ones on alert are ready to blow by miscalculation or even accident, just like a loaded gun in somebody’s home. Only this time it’s our human planetary home at risk and all the humans on it. Recent research has shown that if only 50 bombs were exploded in an exchange between India and Pakistan, a global nuclear winter would ensue, destroying Earth’s civil society, the ecosphere on which it depends, and thus most humans.(2) Then there’s the Obama administration’s misguided plan to launch a whole new round of nuclear weapons development and deployment, some in the form of “modernized”  truck-based mobile nuclear weapons, to the tune of $600 billion.(3)Most important for the current debate, all proposed spending for these new nukes is being excluded from the sequester cuts. (4)

Along with being immoral, hypocritical, and likely to start a new nuclear weapons arms race worldwide, and given that we want everyone else to stop their nuke development, the U.S. plan is also fiscally stupid. Nuclear weapons are the unusable weapon; no responsible military man or woman worth their salt wants to use them. (5) Using them to threaten others is not credible in the hands of nations known to be somewhat rational, even though we did it once. In that case, it was two bombs, used to demonstrate what we could do. Nobody could fire back. The world has reviled that use of nuclear bombs ever since.

Now, we and others in the nuclear club literally have many thousands deployed and ready to fire, plus thousands more available.  This is crazy and expensive. Just as the G.O.P. needs to outgrow “social control” government, we as a nation need to outgrow throwing money at mountains of unusable weapons, or new doomsday weapons only a suicidal fool would use.  Moreover, nukes are just so “twentieth century,” as the saying goes. Although we may not like it much either, today’s modern “war” modality is via cyberspace or other much more sophisticated and eminently all too usable weapons. Let’s all grow up together about nukes now, when the budget pressure is hot and heavy. This is a once in a century chance to start making the earth and everyone on it much safer. That’s even bigger than the one big American family frame. It’s the one big human family frame.

Susan C. Strong, Ph.D., is the Founder and Executive Director of The Metaphor Project, <http://www.metaphorproject.org>, and author of our new book, Move Our Message: How To Get America’s Ear.  The Metaphor Project has been helping progressives mainstream their messages since 1997.

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1. The first piece I wrote about the “One Big Family Frame” was published on Common Dreams in 2005. I have revisited this frame several times in the last six years, in 2008 and again in 2011. To find more recent examples, search The Metaphor Project’s “Examples” archive at http://www.metaphorproject.org. Here’s a short refresher drawn from these essays about what the One Big Family frame has included throughout American history:

“It’s an historic American National Family metaphor, one that is larger than the  “strict father” or “nurturing parent” frames.    The American National Family frame says our country is like any real extended family–fractious but in the end functional. There are people in it who aren’t just like you, but they are still family, and we still have to try to solve our problems together, despite our differences.

The story of this extended American family frame also implies a specific, historical American way of communal problem solving: nationally the operative descriptive words are ‘pragmatic,’ ‘solution-oriented,’ ‘common sense,’ ‘practical,’ ‘pulling together,’ and ‘teamwork.’ Many of these terms also apply at the local level too, along with ‘community building’ and ‘finding common ground.’

The most important thing about this ‘one big family’ frame is the way it pictures people focusing on real problem solving together. It’s about looking at what really works and what doesn’t, and emphasizing agreement, not disagreement. It also means having a shared goal everyone is working toward, even if their reasons for wanting the same result differ. It suggests working out a ‘rough consensus,’ and yes, compromising here and there if the potential results are worth it. It includes tolerating each other’s differences as part of the traditional American respect for variety, individuality, and difference of views.

A vital part of this frame is also the way it acknowledges that we all hold, at least in principle, the same set of basic American Public Moral Values– fairness, honesty, equal opportunity, democracy, freedom, and compassion–drawn from both religious and secular ethics.”

2. Figures and research findings included here were cited by Daniel Ellsberg, in a talk he delivered at “Half Life,” an event celebrating the work of the Western States Legal Foundation, on 2.10.13, in Oakland, CA.

3. The New York Times op-ed, “The Nuclear Agenda,” February 24^th, 2013, and Tri-Valley CARES Citizen’s Watch report, “Return of Mobile Nukes?” p.3, January/February issue 2013.

4. Ploughshares Blog, 3.08.2013.

5. I’m aware of the idea that nukes are seen as useful to nuclear newcomers. This argument was described in a review entitled “Rethinking the Unthinkable,” by Bill Keller, in the January 13, 2013 New York Times Book Review, p. 12. He was citing The Second Nuclear Age, by Paul Bracken, who makes the case that nukes help newcomers to the nuclear club “bluff, intimidate, rally the populace, throw opponents off balance,” and blackmail other countries. They also act as a poison pill, preventing others from attacking them. But even for those purposes, no one needs 1500, 5000, or even 50, and a big powerful country like ours doesn’t need new generations of nukes at all. Monkey see, monkey do!

Instead?  Instead of what? Yes, we should be spending any military savings we can find at home. But that isn’t the answer to the public’s worry about what to do about our perceived enemies. It isn’t even an answer to the question of what we should have done in the past to prevent our having enemies.  The issue is what we should do about them now.  That question must be answered first. If you can show that your alternative proposal for dealing with terrorists works better and saves money, then you can talk credibly about where to spend those savings at home. I’ll say more about this point below.

Now let’s take up the “perceived solution” glitch for a minute. If you can show that a lot of the “military money” we are spending isn’t really dealing with “enemies” at all, but is going into waste, fraud, and abuse, then you can make an airtight case that savings from those military cuts should be spent at home. The reason? Yes, there still has to be a reason that matches the locus of the “security” argument, as we rhetoricians say. And the reason is that growing inequality and social breakdown at home are very serious national security problems too. (Make clear that no amount of domestic militarization will ever succeed long term, if our people are deeply miserable and furious.) The 2012 election is just the first sign of that home truth.

But to make the “waste, fraud, and abuse” approach really stick, we must face up to our other big framing problem with military spending: insider jargon/choir speak. Phrases like “military contractor” or the “military industrial complex” roll off our tongues all too easily. Does the public get what those phrases mean?  Do they believe anything can be done about such mysterious monoliths? Probably not. What if we spoke of “military corporations” instead?

There we have a frame already strong in the public mind right now: excessive, selfish lobbying for stuff that doesn’t serve the public interest, outrageous CEO salaries, abusive worker practices, all at public expense. All we have to add is that, dollar for dollar, “military corporations” generate fewer jobs than any other kind of business, including green energy businesses, which could actually help to reduce the threat of future climate conflict.(1) It’s the standard waste, fraud, and abuse story—a classic element of the American Nightmare story.

Now that we’re talking about actual language, let’s get back to the “perceived enemy” glitch for a minute. What about the idea that there are better ways to deal with perceived enemies than just throwing money and weapons at them? We can point out that civilian-led “peacebuilding” moves work much better than military ones. (2) This tack also has the advantage of putting a positive idea out there first, something I always advocate. (In fact, I think we need a lot more emphasis on educating the public about what peacebuilding is, how it works, when it’s worked in the past, and the need to fund and practice it more.) So some phrases like “peacebuilding works best,” or “peacebuilding stops war” would be a good way to start. In this case, the “hunh?” factor coming from public ignorance about “peacebuilding” could provide an opening to say more about it. (It also could produce some nice graphics.)

Second, only after putting a positive image out there should we go on to trash war as a tactic: “war fails,” “war doesn’t work,” “war is obsolete,” etc. Notice I left out the old perennial favorites, “no war,” “stop the war,” or “war is not x or not y.” Pure negatives lack suggestions about exactly what the problem with war is. Moreover, modern cognitive science has shown that people fail to process “not” in a statement on the first go round, especially if they already think war might be a good idea.

Finally, it always helps to get very specific about exactly what other things military we want to cut. Just repeating over and over again that we want to cut “military spending” is sleep-inducing. Get specific about stopping the counterproductive Afghan budget drain. Then (except for stockpile protection and reduction), there’s cutting spending on nukes and keeping nukes on alert, drone warfare, and along that line, the biggest, most dangerous new drone boondoggle of all, “Star Wars II,” the idiotic plan for a global space-based surveillance and attack drone system, eventually to be run by robots! (3) This system is what Obama used to ridicule Romney’s “build up the Navy” idea during the campaign.) I think we need to start ridiculing this global drone system plan ourselves; ridicule worked to help do in “Star Wars I.” Remember those black umbrellas with big holes in them being flourished in drill team style at media events? It was wildly popular. (If you are too young to recall that, ask an old peacenik how that went.)

Even if the “fiscal cliff” negotiations end up leaving too much military spending in place, the changes in framing tactics I’ve suggested here will serve us well in all of the years ahead. Budget battles are seldom really over for good.

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Susan C. Strong, Ph.D., is the founder and executive director of The Metaphor Project, and author of Move Our Message: How to Get America’s Ear. Before starting The Metaphor Project, she was a co-founder of The “Who’s Counting?” Project, an online vehicle for publicizing the film, Who’s Counting? Marilyn Waring on Sex, Lies, and Global Economics. In the 1990’s she served as Senior Research Associate for six years at The Center for Economic Conversion, (Mountain View, CA), publishing “The GDP Myth: How It Harms Our Quality of Life and What Communities Can Do About It,” (The Center for Economic Conversion, Mountain View, 1995, 38 pp.). She also served as a co-founder of Peace Action’s original Peace Economy Campaign and National Strategy Committee Co-Chair.   

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Notes:

1. One bit of military spending we do need to keep and defend from the G.O.P. slashers attacking it is the Pentagon’s green energy initiative. Ironically enough, the military, which the G.O.P. usually worships, has drawn the non-G.O.P. conclusion that our forces and our bases must go green in the interest of national security. Military futurists have studied the climate science and run the global conflict scenarios. They are facing the facts and making plans, unlike most of the rest of the world. Why should we peace advocates be happy about this? Because the Pentagon has the purchasing power to help drive green energy business into the mainstream economy, and going green will help reduce conflict in the future. For details, see
   1. http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/making-it-home/the-real-reason-the-military-is-going-green and
   2. also http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Solar-wind-power-get-Pentagon-boost-3767317.php, as well as
   3. http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=79b9ea75-802a-23ad-4dd3-3cbf1e2adc47 and the update article at
   4. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/29/pentagon-clean-green-alternative-energy_n_2207052.html
2. I may be using the term “peacebuilding” more broadly here than the technical definitions of it in use by some official bodies like the U.N. and other institutions or theorists in the field. For details about those restrictions on the term, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peacebuilding. I think the word has more educational power than those technical definitions may cover. If you search the web for “peacebuilding,” you will find a wide variety of other resources as well.
3. My source for this point is an article published on 11.06.12 on TomDispatch, by Alfred W. McCoy, and reposted by AlterNet. The title is “New Weapons Systems Could Give Pentagon Unprecedented Power Over the Planet. . .or Lead to Future Military Disaster.” http://www.alternet.org/world/new-weapons-systems-could-give-pentagon-unprecedented-power-over-planet-or-lead-future

Here’s one that came up recently in The New York Times. How about proposing a nuclear free zone in the Middle East? Probably most people there really don’t want a ‘hot’ war, one in which radioactive nuclear material from bombing Iran’s current facilities would be spread all over the area, and then all over the planet too. Yes, I know the idea of a nuclear free zone sounds like pie in the sky, but Shibley Telhami and Stephen Kull, reporting in the New York Times (1.16.2012), have found impressive levels of support for this idea even within Israel itself.(3) It’s also something constructive that many peace advocates could honestly support. As for Iran, who knows? Their politics are so complex that we can’t safely predict how they would respond if more people get behind the idea elsewhere. At the very least, it’s definitely outside the current box.

Second, in conjunction with the idea of a nuclear free zone, it might be interesting to raise another completely “out of the box” nuclear idea: dumping nuclear power. After Fukushima, are the Iranians or anyone else wise to keep pursuing civilian nuclear energy? Surely Iran has solar or wind capability, possibly even thermal? The Iranians are a smart, technologically sophisticated people who are very reasonably thinking ahead about what to do when the oil runs out. But maybe their national pride could be salved even better by leapfrogging ahead into green energy. The potential for making green money as well as green energy in the years ahead looks good. Going green would also be morally superior, in that it would be pollution-free and a positive contribution to fighting future global climate chaos. It would also take away the biggest excuse others give for attacking them. It could be a real win/win.

At the very least, if we progressive advocates make a big noise about thinking outside the box re Iran right now, it will give people something else to talk about. Let’s ‘crowd source’ as many new “out of the box” ideas as we can. Right now there is way too much ‘we’re going to war’ talk going on, especially here at home. Let’s push hard for changing the subject to ‘thinking outside the box’ before history repeats itself, and the world talks itself into a very stupid, self-destructive war–again.

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Notes

1. Just one more indication of things to come: the Friends Committee on National Legislation recently sent out a warning that Senators Lindsey Graham (SC) and Joe Lieberman (CT) are preparing a bill that would force the U.S. into even greater confrontation with Iran.
2. An interesting experiment was recently reported in the 1.23.12 issue of Science Daily about improving thinking by making the “out of the box” metaphor physical.
3. New York Times, Preventing a Nuclear Iran Peacefully

Some Senators Gamble with Nukes

By Susan C. Strong

In mid-November Senator Kyl, (R, AZ), the Senate Whip, said we shouldn’t ratify the new START treaty with Russia until all newly elected senators take their seats .Of course, members of Senator Kyl’s party have already announced that they will do anything to see that Obama fails. So their nuclear gambit smells very much like another way to stop the president. But these senators are gambling big–stopping Obama versus quickly resuming our inspection of Russian nuclear bomb facilities?  Or how about supporting our collaborative work to prevent the Iranians from building a nuclear bomb? Hey, if these right wing senators could just stop Obama, they wouldn’t care what happens in the Middle East?

Then there’s doing more to stop the flow of nuclear materials into the hands of terrorists all over the world.  Ditto for reducing the chances of accidental nuke launch, triggered by  bird strike, or cloud shadow, or computer glitch—who cares about that, these “conservative” senators seem to say. Stopping a launch like that before it really got going, because there was still U.S.-Russian trust?  No dice to all that is the Senate holdouts’ message?

Even if an accidental launch triggered global nuclear winter, making climate change big-time and life on earth caput, it would be worth stopping Obama?  Senator Kyl and his friends don’t seem to care about reducing the chance by even a hair that some terrorist will create a suitcase bomb with black market nuclear material, smuggle it into the capital, and blow up DC, starting with the Senate. These senators just want to make very sure that their political party wins the next presidential election, which might end up taking place amid the radioactive ruins of New York City, Chicago, New Orleans, St. Louis, Seattle, Los Angeles, Dallas, and Main Street USA?

If  they could just stop Obama, that, they believe, would be the BIG win? Well, let’s just hope and pray they don’t win this one! Maybe the sanity displayed by grown up Senators Snowe and Collins, will spread; the two now say they will vote for ratifying the treaty. And maybe, if the treaty is held over to 2011, the new Tea Party senators will also wake up and smell the fallout. Some gambles are really just not worth it. That’s what Henry Kissinger, George H.W. Bush, George Schulz, William Perry and Sam Nunn think too.

Susan C. Strong, Ph.D. is the founder and executive director of The Metaphor Project.. The Project assists activists in mainstreaming their messages by framing them as part of the best American story. http://www.metaphorproject.org 

Below is a short piece I published yesterday on The Daily Kos. Some of the comments immediately made on it are very much worth reading too—a direct quote from Osama Bin Laden found in a U.S. Government translation of his videotaped speech, published by the Washington Post on November 1, 2004 and a pie chart from the Rand Corporation about what really defeats terrorists (not big military ops) are among the best.

Please pass this post along to your networks—our U.S. domestic battle over Afghanistan funding is about to start in earnest. You can also go to the page directly by clicking the following link and if you are logged in at The Daily Kos, you can leave your own comment or recommend the piece as well. 

http://susancstrong.dailykos.com/

Thanks,

Susan C. Strong

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Framing Afghanistan as a Snare, Trap, or Trick

by Susan C. Strong, The Metaphor Project

In Rob Kall’s OpEd News 11.26.09 piece on American metaphors used to sell the Afghanistan War to our people, he definitely covered all of the ways that work (Afghanistanas Sports Event, Sexual Fantasy and Detour From the Hero’s Journey). (1)  Also, it’s true, as he says, that in the (sports) hero’s journey, a triumphant return home requires outwitting or avoiding all efforts to stop his or her success. But some ways this counterargument can be framed using common American story motifs are these: Afghanistanis a trap Al Qaeda and Bin Laden set for us, a snare, a trick designed to bleed us dry, toweaken us, to wear us and our economy down, and so defeat us, while ensuring we enrage Muslims worldwide. Think about it–why did Bin Laden fall back on a country no one has ever conquered for his training operations? (This is also true for the area of Pakistan Al Qaeda is in now.) The only way we can win this one is ‘not to fall any further into Bin Laden’s trap’–‘to outwit him by avoiding a long drawn out struggle in Afghanistan.’ ‘Reducing our involvement there is the only way to get clear of the trap.’ Let’s hope President Obama uses some of these other American metaphors to tell us on Tuesday that we are going to scale down and escape Bin Laden’s Afghan trap!

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(1)  Try going to http://www.opednews.com, searching for Rob Kall’s own blog, and then choosing articles. As you can see, this piece was originally published on 11.26.09.

If your goal is  winning over a population and peeling them away from guerrillas in their midst, dropping unmanned bombs or airstrikes on them that kill mostly civilian grannies and grandpas, mommies, babies, and kids must be the stupidest public relations stunt ever conceived. Counterterrorism scholars agree that to succeed in counterinsurgency work, you have to PROTECT the people. (1) It doesn’t matter whether or not the Taliban is using them as human shields. It also doesn’t matter if we bag a few Taliban leaders that way every once in a while.  As President Obama himself recently said about torture, the real issue is not about whether it works or not, it’s about who we are and what it does to who we are.  The same is true about the drone and airstrike attacks.

Our “death from the air” AfPak tactic is the ultimate morally corrupt outcome of the kind of war fighting tactic begun in the American Civil War with Grant, when he deliberately targeted civilians at Vicksburg. Even if we aren’t deliberately gunning for civilians now, accepting that kind of “collateral damage,” as the military calls it, is wrong. As a patriotic American, our drone and airstrike bombing tactics make me feel sick. It’s worse even than our having tortured people—is this what America has come to, the land of the free, the brave, the noble Americans who stand for democracy and human rights?

Moreover, just as our torture tactics did, our air war tactics are turning the simple people abused by them against us and seeding new Taliban and Al Qaeda recruits in droves, which is reportedly the Taliban’s intention. Grant’s “civilian targets” innovation took place in a world where there was no worldwide web or instant media exposure. Now we all truly live in McLuhan’s global village.  Everybody knows everything you are doing right away, especially if you’re the biggest military power in the area. Moreover, according to a July, 25^th, 2008 Associated Press report,  the Taliban have a very sophisticated communications strategy, just right for their audience. They and their sympathizers create “songs, religious chants, and poetry that appeal to Afghan nationalism and Islamic pride.” These are available on audio cassettes, DVDs and even as ring tones for cell phones, in addition to web sites, pamphlets, magazines and fliers. (2) This is the new “smart” war, and we are flunking.

Today Afghanistan (and now Pakistan too) form the latest horrible case study for the new reality in international politics—war simply doesn’t work as counterterrorism strategy. Mr. President, change your AfPak course or give us back our criminally wasted, innocent blood-soaked tax dollars!

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1. The latest testimony about this point comes from David Kilcullen and Andrew McDonald Exum in their 5.17.09 New York Times Op Ed, entitled “Death From Above, Outrage Down Below,” on p. 13. I especially like their example of how we Americans would react if the police bombed the whole neighborhood in which a drug house was situated.
2. “Multimedia Taliban Get Their Message Across,” by Nahal Toosi, published in the San Francisco Chronicle on that date.