US Elections Reveal Need for Integrating Internal and External Reform

The bigger question is—when these solutions are well-known, why have not these been adopted and why the situation in some important respects continues to deteriorate? This is the really crucial question which needs to go beyond the analysis generally available in academic papers as this concerns important political issues of injustice. We need to ask why billions are easily available in the USA for weapons but even millions are not available for some important aspects of social justice, why billions worth of tax gifts can be given to the rich but millions worth of essential expenditure for the poorest is more difficult to find.

The fact is that a system of injustice has become so deeply established in the USA that solutions outside this system are difficult to implement. What should be emphasized is that this system of injustice is causing even more harm to people of other countries than what it is causing to people within USA.

Due to this system if 600,000 excess deaths a year are caused in the USA, then a similar or higher number of deaths are likely being caused in other countries as well. The number of deaths caused by the USA’s forever wars is in many millions as can be seen by adding up the immediate and longer-term mortality figures of wars in Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere, including proxy wars (in addition of course there was the use of atomic bombs against Japan after Japan had already been defeated for all practical purposes). Then there are a large number of deaths caused by arbitrary imposition of wide-ranging sanctions, highly unjust covert and overt interventions and coups in other countries which resulted in a large number of deaths (in countries like Congo, Chile, Iran, Nicaragua, Haiti, Greece, Guatemala, Brazil etc.). Then there are also the large number of deaths associated with exports of weapons to aggressor countries as well as exports of several highly hazardous products and technologies. Hence in brief we can say that unjust systems in the USA have been causing avoidable 600,000 excess deaths in the USA and a somewhat higher number in other countries annually. Excess deaths in other countries are defined here as deaths caused by various injustices of the US (or allies acting under US leadership), whether in the form of wars, coups or regime change efforts, subversions, exploitation, sanctions, imposition of unfair trade and economic policies or exports of hazardous products and technologies.

These excess deaths inside and outside USA are two parts of the same unjust system, an important aspect missed by most academic studies. Once you establish an unjust system that inflicts unjust wars on other countries, then the same unjust system adopts internal unjust and discriminative policies within the country too, although this may get partially softened by electoral considerations at times.

Another reflection of how internal and external injustices are closely related is the fact that the leaders with the biggest promise of justice and peace have been assassinated within the USA as also in other countries with fingers pointed towards the same US agencies and forces. This is how the assassinations of President John Kennedy and President Allende are related, the killings of Martin Luther King Jr. and Prime Minister Lumumba are related.

Several eminent scholars have stated that the solution for the USA to avoid excess deaths is to improve health care and socio-economic conditions for the lower half of the population, but if we go a step further and ask why this has not happened in recent years, then we also need to say more clearly and loudly that the established unjust system must be challenged and replaced by a system that is based on justice internally and externally.

Such struggles against well-established systems of injustice are needed in so many countries but most of all these are needed in the USA as this is the most powerful and influential country in the world whose policies have a worldwide impact. To give one example, environment, health and farmer activists all over the world are trying to stop GM crops and foods because of their serious adverse impacts on health, environment and farming, also because these can contaminate all farming and normal crops and naturally grown crops cannot co-exist with GM crops without getting contaminated at some stage. However these activists realize time and gain that they are frustrated by the powerful support GM crops and foods get from big business interests concentrated in the USA and allied countries. Thanks to these big business interests, consumers and farmers in the USA and allied countries are exposed to highly hazardous GM crops and foods, as well as the agro-chemicals used to grow them, but then these are inflicted on many other countries too in an overwhelming effort of a few giant agro-business corporations to control the world farming and food system.

From a world perspective the struggle is against the unjust establishment of the USA, just the top 5% or so, and never against the people of the USA and in fact the struggling American people need all the worldwide solidarity to help in their struggles. The creation of a justice-based USA is a very important part of the worldwide struggle against injustice. The aim should never be to replace a world dominated by the USA by a world dominated by China but instead our aim should be to create a USA, a China and the entire world based on justice, peace and environment protection.

There is another level at which the linkages between internal and external crisis as well as reforms need to be explored. When aggressive and unjust policies are adopted in a country and society, externally and internally, then the ethical and moral fabric is eroded at a deep level. Moreover, to draw attention away from obvious injustices, there is an increasing tendency to indulge in falsehoods and cover up truth. To give an example, highly unjust war or invasion may be promoted as a big achievement. This is harmful particularly for the more sensitive mind of youth. In such conditions there can be a breakdown or a serious erosion of the social-ethical fabric which if it had remained in a healthy state could have functioned as a natural protection against such social problems as depression, various addictions and weakening or deterioration of various social relationships.

Linkages of increasing social problems to aggressions have sometimes been observed at the more obvious levels. To give an example, it was pointed out, rightly so, that the increase in the trafficking of opium and heroin in the course of the USA’s deeply troubled involvement in Afghanistan in the first two decades of this century led to increased availability of heroin in the USA and to increased addictions among its youth in particular. This is obvious enough, but the deeper question is whether the weakening of the social-ethical fabric also creates a hollowness in which there is increasing confusion, uncertainty, lack of values and purpose in life and it is in these conditions that addictions become more likely, and also the likelihood of depression and erosion of social relationships also increases.

Various aspects of social distress are analysed by experts often in very capable and academically advanced ways but unfortunately often also in isolated ways so that a holistic view of the social crisis does not emerge.

Looking at some of the relevant data, we find that nearly 28 per cent of US households are single person households. A survey by Cigna before the onset of COVID revealed that almost half of the adults feel lonely sometimes or all the time. Nearly 50% of all US marriages end in divorce or separation. Children suffer very adverse short-term and long-term impacts of divorce and separation.10 to 12 million persons, mostly women, are physically abused in a year by an intimate partner, nearly 20 per minute. 1 in 4 adults –26%–suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year, several from more, according to the National Institute of Mental Health Disorders.

The official statistics of ‘Youth Risk Behaviour Survey’ (YRBS), USA, 2011-2021 released by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, (CDC), USA, revealed truly alarming levels of distress among US youth. The YRBS statistics revealed that in year 2021 42% of US high school students “experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness”. What was even more shocking in the YRBS data was that in 2021, as many as 22% high school students in the USA “seriously considered attempting suicide”. Saddest of all, the YRBS survey informed that as many as 10% of high school students in the USA actually attempted suicide in 2021.

These high levels of distress are extremely troubling and have increased despite remedial actions proposed by eminent experts in the past. There is clearly need for deeper reflection on wider and deeper causes as well as solutions. More than individual consultations and treatments, efforts to find what ails the wider society and remedial actions based on this may be needed more.

In particular it is important to examine the links of the increasing internal distress of USA society with the increasing aggression of the USA at international level. As this writer has emphasized several times, such links need to be recognized and will help the peace movement within the USA to mobilize people to create a society which is at peace with itself and with the entire world, devoted more to reducing its own distress as a higher priority.

Other than YRBS data, there have been several other indications of the deep distress within US society. This is evident from the call given twice in recent times by the top child health organizations in the country for declaring a mental health national emergency for children and adolescents, given the scale of these problems. If this won’t wake up a society to the need for wider and deeper introspection, what else will?

On the other hand, an idea of the highly destructive consequences of USA’s existing policy distortions is conveyed by the fact that in terms of direct as well as indirect deaths the War on Terror alone has caused 4.5 million deaths (this estimate of Brown University also needs updating and include some other counties as well) and has cost the USA 8000 billion dollars (about a billion dollars a day or 12000 dollars per second over a 22 year period).

As stated earlier too that while reforms are needed in all countries but it is reforms in the USA for creating a society based on peace and welfare which are most urgently needed and can benefit the entire humanity. Hence the people of the USA who are dedicated to peace, justice and environment protection have a very big responsibility for bringing these reforms. These efforts will be greatly helped if a close relationship between external aggression and internal distress can be established, and the academic community can contribute a lot to this. The present, post-election time is a very conducive time for carrying further this debate as at this time of debating various reforms people are likely to be more receptive to exploring such understanding for integrating internal and external reforms.