Japan's Pacifist Constitution Obligates the United States

by John Phillips

The reaction of Japan to its current situation is a potent example of the difficulties of nuclear disarmament. Those traumatized by atomic bombings 70 years ago don't want a future generation of Japanese to experience the horror of their personal experience. They have come to appreciate the value of the pacifist constitution, forced on Japan by the U.S. after WWII. The side of that not often discussed is the fact that the U.S. is the ultimate guarantor of Japanese security -- including a heavy conventional presence and extended nuclear deterrents.

Hiroshima Destroyed by U.S. Atomic Bombing August 1945

Whereas Japan is not obligated to defend the U.S., the U.S. is obligated to defend Japan, even in a nuclear exchange if necessary. Japan will not and should not allow the U.S. to shirk its responsibility since that was the essential bargain in exchange for Japan's pacifist military posture.

Now, Japan is surrounded by hostile nations that have not forgiven WWII atrocities and, in some cases, older conflicts (e.g., the Russo-Japanese War). China is rapidly building a modern nuclear weapon capability of poorly understood scale. North Korea continuously threatens Japan with its nuclear arsenal and has even kidnapped Japanese citizens. South Korea's enmity with Japan simmers beneath the surface, held at bay by close conventional alliances and extended nuclear deterrents from the U.S. in both cases. Russia still holds the Kuril Islands since the end of WWII. The angst against Japan runs deep, fueled by a history of genocides, human trafficking, 'comfort women,' etc., under the dominance of the Japanese empire.

Thus, being pacifist in a very dangerous neighborhood today is purchased by a history of U.S. dominance in the Pacific theater since WWII, nothing more. Given direct and accelerating challenges posed by China to U.S. regional dominance, continuous threats to Japan in North Korean rhetoric and its ballistic missile launches over Japanese airspace, and the U.S. tiring of the high cost of maintaining a post WWII military sphere of influence in both Asia and Europe, Japan is reasonably concerned about its position looking forward.

The U.S. has cautiously encouraged Japan to take on more military responsibility, but must be very careful to ensure that Japan's faith in ultimate nuclear security remains guaranteed -- this lies behind Obama's pivot to Asia. Otherwise, nuclear breakout is not an unlikely outcome. How do we make progress at untying such convoluted Gordian Knots? Complex global and regional realities lie at the heart of approaches to nuclear disarmament. There is no simple approach to solve such problems, but the human and environmental catastrophe that awaits us if we fail demands from us nothing less than our best efforts.
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Jon Phillips is a Senior Nuclear Technology Expert at the International Atomic Energy Agency and Director, Sustainable Nuclear Power Initiative at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The opinions expressed here are his own.

American Exceptionalism: Part II

Read Part I Here

The United Nations Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), regulating the international trade in conventional arms -- from small arms to battle tanks, combat aircraft and warships -- entered into force on Christmas Eve, December 24, 2014. It had been signed by 130 countries (including the U.S.) and ratified by 60, ten more than it needed to become effective. The United States was not, however, among the countries that ratified the ATT.

The treaty establishes standards for the global trade in conventional weapons, with the goal of preventing such weapons from being sold to those who would use them to commit genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Congressional Republicans were strongly opposed to the global treaty. You might even say they were up in arms about it. In fact, 50 senators sent President Obama a letter expressing their opposition to the ATT, including every Republican except one, plus five Democrats worried about backlash from the NRA.

Some have called for the Obama Administration to "unsign" the treaty; something George W. Bush did in 2002 when he renounced U.S. obligations as a signatory to the 1998 Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court (ICC). It was just as well that he did so, given the recently released Senate Report on the Bush Administration's execrable program of torture and extraordinary rendition during the Iraq War. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Tenet in the dock at the ICC at The Hague might cast an unfavorable light on America's human rights record.

But I digress. This little essay is about how Congressional Republicans, concerned more about currying favor with arms dealers, legal and illegal, and the broader Military Industrial Complex, along with their NRA quislings, have, with malice aforethought, killed any attempt to reign in the international arms trade. Their intransigence has doomed untold millions of people from Syria to Nigeria and beyond to death and destruction. On the other hand, it has made millionaires and billionaires of people like Adan Khashoggi, and Pierre Konrad Dadak, who threatened to put anyone who crossed him, "in a jar."

Overseas weapons sales by the United States comprise more than three-quarters of the global arms market, valued at $85.3 billion in 2011. America is without peer when it comes to supplying the world, especially developing countries, with the means to murder, maim, and mutilate. And in this, we are speaking only of reported arms sales. Illegal trafficking of firearms -- the weapons that end up in the bloody hands of Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab, Al-Qa'ida, and the ever popular Islamic State -- very probably rivals that of the legal trade. The bottom line is the bottom line, i.e., we are dealing with a hugely profitable business.

Republicans have always been known as the party of big business. And the arms trade is just that. Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Boeing are far and away the top three arms-producing companies in the world. In fact, the United States has a larger share of the worldwide arms market than the rest of the world combined and double the market share of all of the Western Europe OECD combined. Indeed, in this respect, America is exceptional.

Republicans argue that America’s arms trade is part and parcel of the implementation of its foreign policy, and should not be subject to the whims of a U.N. secretariat consisting of a ‘bunch of foreigners.’ In this regard, the non-partisan Congressional Research Service has said,

"Whereas the principal motivation for arms sales by key foreign suppliers in earlier years might have been to support a foreign policy objective, today that motivation may be based as much, if not more, on economic considerations as those of foreign or national security policy."

Still, Republicans have other reasons besides money and money to rail against the treaty. Listen to their ‘speechifying’ on the Senate floor and you’ll hear them lament a further intrusion into the inalienable rights of “patriotic Americans” -- the Arms Trade Treaty violates our Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms.” Top NRA lobbyist Chris Cox said the treaty represents, "blatant attacks on the constitutional rights and liberties of every law-abiding American." The thing is, that’s just not true. No international treaty overrides our Constitution. Period. So the Second Amendment argument is bogus and that brings us back to the real argument, MONEY. Republicans value money. Life? Not so much.

ISIS Mass Execution. Where do they get their weapons?

Threats from a warming climate come in extra large and very small packages: Mosquitoes Carry Yet Another Tropical Disease toward the U.S.

Cases of chikungunya fever have already spread across the Caribbean islands.

Feb 6, 2014 |By Dina Fine Maron, in Scientific American

It began last October, with a simple mosquito bite on the Caribbean island of Saint Martin. With that itch-inducing nip from an infected mosquito, a disease known for causing patients to stoop over in pain made its first locally acquired appearancein the Western Hemisphere. By mid-December, two dozen cases of the viral disease had been confirmed. More than 1,000 cases have since scattered across the Caribbean isles, inching ever closer to the U.S.

The disease—chikungunya fever (pronounced chik-un-GUHN-ya)—is named for its trademark overwhelming joint pain: In the Makonde language of southeastern Africa the word means “that which bends up.” There is no vaccine for chikungunya, but the virus is rarely fatal. It typically causes high fevers, joint pain, rash and headaches that last for about a week. In severe cases it leads to longer-term joint pain.

Risk that it could soon show up in the U.S. Virgin Islands or Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is “high” says Mark Fischer, a medical epidemiology with U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Arboviral Diseases Branch. “I think it’s very likely that this virus will further spread throughout the Caribbean or the Americas,” he says. That means the continental U.S. could soon be feeling the pain, he adds. And although the cold weather would afford some level of protection to some areas of the U.S. (because mosquitoes are less likely to be out supping on humans in the cold) that modicum of protection will disappear as the weather gets warmer. In fact, the spread of chikungunya in the Western Hemisphere could be poised to create a new normal. “This will move from country to country and could basically establish itself and become endemic in this part of the world,” Fischer says.

There are no guarantees about when, or even if, a massive chikungunya fever outbreak will happen. Consider the example of dengue, another virus transmitted by the same mosquito species. It has taken hold in some parts of the U.S., such assouthern Texas, but not in other areas, including Tucson, Ariz., where the conditions are perfect for an outbreak. Chikungunya outbreaks are equally hard to predict.

Whereas it is unnerving that chikungunya has landed on islands close to the U.S., that in itself doesn’t necessary increase the risk it will end up in this country. “I don’t know if we are at any greater risk now that it is in the British Virgin Islands than we were weeks ago when it was in Saint Martin,” Fischer says. It is not that mosquitoes will cross the ocean. Instead, chikungunya is most likely to spread with infected people hopping from island to island and to the mainland. So will it land here? We’ll have to wait and see.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If it is, fix it!

Factoring in costs borne by the government, the private sector, and individuals, the United States spends over $1.9 trillion annually on health care expenses, more than any other industrialized country.

Based on OECD analyses, the United States spends more per capita on health care than any other country, and has one of the highest growth rates in per capita health care spending since 1980 among higher income countries. The U.S. spent by far a higher share of its gross domestic product (GDP) on health care than any other industrialized country. Since 1980, the U.S. also has had among the highest average annual growth rates in per capita spending on health care. Despite this relatively high level of spending, the U.S. does not appear to provide substantially greater health resources to its citizens, or achieve substantially better health benchmarks, compared to other developed countries.

The United States spent 16 percent of its GDP in 2007 on health care, higher than any other developed nation. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that number will rise to 25 percent by 2025.

A lot of people seem to believe that the reason the U.S. spends more than other countries is because we're a litigious society, i.e., they blame malpractice law suits. Others believe our health care costs more because it's more readily available (to those who can afford it). They claim people living in places with "socialized medicine" have to wait forever to see a doctor or have a procedure done. And yet a recent study by the John Hopkins School of Public Health found that neither one of these factors explain more than an insignificant fraction of the difference in health care costs. This study also showed that the U.S. citizens are paying more for comparable, or worse outcomes.

U.S. businesses, finding the cost of health care benefits for their employees too onerous, are out sourcing jobs overseas, and access to employer-sponsored health insurance has been on the decline.

No wonder it went bankrupt. General Motors covered more than 1.1 million employees and former employees, and the company said it spent roughly $5.6 billion on health care expenses in 2006. GM said health care costs added between $1,500 and $2,000 to the sticker price of every automobile it made.

There are some 43 million Americans without health insurance. Uninsured persons accounted for nearly one-fifth of the 120 million hospital-based emergency department visits in 2006. The absolute number of people using emergency rooms has gone up as much as 20 to 30 percent in the last six to eight months due to the recession and people losing their jobs. Handling health care in the ER is the most inefficient, lest effective way of addressing America's health needs. The cost of ER care for uninsured patients doesn't disappear. It strains hospital budgets and can be indirectly shifted onto families and individuals that do have insurance coverage in a "hidden tax" of higher premiums. Estimates put the hidden tax somewhere between $1,000 and $1,300.

Of course the true cost of a broken health care system is in the quality of care that's afforded American citizens. Yes, it's broken. Let's fix it!