 Welcome to this conversation with Professor Kim Hammond at New Mexico State, and he's also one of the co-founders of Pivot to Peace, a very important voice in the peace movement, and a very, you know, a studied scholar when it comes to the history of Asia, the history of the world, and US militarism. Kim, welcome. And thanks for contributing your time to breaking down Kurt Campbell's record in the new arms race. Sure, then glad to be here. So, you know, I want to start by essentially spelling out, you know, why you think the Biden administration is tapping Kurt Campbell to be Deputy Secretary of State. And what kind of politics Campbell represents? I mean, a lot of it revolves around the pivot to Asia. Of course, you know, the pivot to Asia has its roots in the Obama administration. And, you know, one can argue the US has long been targeting Asia, you know, from Millard, Phil Morrison, Dink, Kamara Perry to threaten Japan with gunboat diplomacy. Colonizing the Philippines in 1898 and for decades after and the Korean Vietnam Wars, but there's been an understanding maybe since the start of the 21st century that the US, from the point of view of militarists in Washington that they put the Asia Pacific on the back burner. And they had this pivot to Asia, which Kurt Campbell is a big part in orchestrating so walk us through what that exactly meant the pivot to Asia and what was Campbell's role in it. Sure. I mean Kurt Campbell is often seen or at least certainly sort of represents himself as well as sort of the intellectual side of the neoconservative, you know, foreign policy perspectives here in the United States. And he really played a very significant role in the in the, you know, pivot to Asia as it was called. In fact, wrote a book called the pivot a couple of years after that all got launched. He's he is often referred to as the architect of American policy contemporary American policy towards towards Asia and of course when they say Asia what they really mean is primarily China. It looks at Asia, but primarily the focus is China and the and the objective is to sort of mobilize other resources including primarily American military resources around Asia and redeploy them in Asia from elsewhere, in order to, you know, contain and constrain China's development. And this, you know, this of course takes place back around 2011. President Obama at that time announces the pivot to Asia. Then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton writes an article in foreign policy advocating for a new American Pacific century the idea of, you know, revising or reviving American dominance, especially in the western Pacific and again what that means is encircling China, focusing on China. And I think, I think, you know, sort of the macro context in which that you know this makes sense and we can we can understand kind of where they're coming from what their motivations are has sort of two tracks. One, as as you alluded to there is that right at the beginning of the 21st century, of course, with with the events of 911, you know, American strategic activity shifted really intensely to the so called war on terror. You know, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, other kinds of military ramping up in the Middle East. And the focus for a while was primarily on on, you know, attacking Islamic radicalism so called and all that. But at the same time that was a period, the end of the 20th century and the first decade say of the present century, where the United States felt American political elites felt fairly confident in how their efforts to integrate China into the global capitalist system we're working out. You know, China had launched its program of reform and opening to the outside bringing in allowing foreign capital to come in collaborating with international organizations joining the World Trade Organization, things like that. All that had gone on through the 80s and the 90s and carrying on into the early 21st century. And the objective really for the United States was to have China become a kind of subordinate integrated cog in the global capitalist machinery dominated by the United States. And down to the early 21st century it appeared in some ways that that that objective was was being attained. China in order to gain access to technology and capital and all these kinds of things had adopted a fairly accommodating stance towards the United States towards the global capitalist system. Deng Xiaoping had urged back in the early 90s he urged the Chinese leadership, as he put it to buy their time and build their capacities build their capabilities, meaning not to not to push not to not to be confrontational with the United States to sort of de emphasize, or at least not, you know, foreground the socialist nature of China's development and China's economy, but to sort of go along and get along in order to, you know, achieve the developmental objectives that they that they had prioritized. That begins to change in the first decade of this century because China had successfully pursued its development we all know that there were 20 years of double digit growth every year 101112% annual growth and gross domestic product. And so, by the early 21st century China was able to begin to sort of stand on its own two feet again, and no longer felt the necessity to, you know, completely kind of kowtow to to the West. And that gets demonstrated in 2008 when China weathers the global financial crisis without without too much difficulty they have disruptions in the domestic economy but they deal with those they the socialist core of their system buffers that in terms of workers, and they're able to redirect economic resources in ways that got China through that much better than than the economies of the West. And I think that some of the analysts and leaders in Washington saw that and realized or began to have a glimmer that maybe China wasn't going to have a color revolution or take the capitalist road or just become a, you know, as I said, a cog in the capitalist machinery, it really was going to pursue its own sort of agenda. And I think that's what leads Obama and Clinton and certainly Kurt Campbell to to push for this this pivot to Asia, saying you know look we kind of got the the Islamic terrorist thing down we know we were occupying these countries where we have major forces in the area. Let's get back to the real critical issue going forward, which is China. And the focus is back on now, you know, well, if China's not going to obey us if China's not going to, you know, subordinate itself to us then what are we going to do about it we're going to have to isolate them try to slow down their development if we can't just totally derail it and and and you know keep them keep them boxed in and that's what the pivot to Asia is all about. And so when when when Kurt Campbell says he's not, you know, trying to to attack China, or, or you know have an antagonistic thing in China he's just trying to, you know, maintain the the rules based international order. That is of course an order which is based on rules that the United States makes in order to perpetuate its own leadership and its own power and the Chinese aren't playing that game anymore, especially now since Xi Jinping has been in the government. And so, you know that that antagonism has only deepened, and that makes Kurt Campbell one of the key figures, because he is, you know, he's the sort of as I say the sort of intellectual articulation of that policy making it sound, you know, sort of real politic or pragmatic or whatever but it's really about perpetuating American dominance in the global system. I appreciate you laying that foundation in that historical context. You know, in particular I think about how, you know, Campbell, you know co founded the Center for a new American secure your CNAS, and that think tank, they simulate war games between China and the United States. And, you know, this is essentially contributed to a new arms race. And, you know, there's like, you know, historical, I think, scenarios which are very worrisome and precedents which were really worrisome, like, you know, there's the history of World War one help for Germany and Russia, sorry Germany the UK, where in arms race like that and then that ended with a with a World War and then also the World War arms race the one you know from the, you know 1940s to the 90s that one was also devastating especially for the global south. So, you know with those precedents, what can this new 21st century arms race lead to Well, I think I think those are important historical examples to bear in mind, especially the 1980s arms race the Reagan era arms race because when when Ronald Reagan becomes president you know he really was a quite violent anti communist and even though, you know he was happy to shake hands with Gorbachev and have pictures taken and all that really his his overline objective was to destroy the Soviet Union to destroy socialism, and to, you know, try to open up as much of the planet as possible to American capital, American capital was already in a kind of crisis in the 1970s, you know, a competition with Japan and Germany, the saturation of American markets, you know, and, and so the idea of sort of opening up new areas for investment for capital, you know valorization. This was really critical for if the American economy was going to try to you know, get back into a more dynamic phase. So he launches this arms race with the Soviet Union. And what's amazing about it is in many ways it was kind of a, it was kind of just a facade, you know that that a lot of the systems these you know Star Wars laser weapons and all this stuff. Most of that stuff never worked, you know, they invested billions and billions of dollars in development but that wasn't really the point the point wasn't to have systems that worked. The point was to drive the Soviet Union into a competitive posture, which forced them to divert resources from the civil society from the consumers, you know, the consumer standards of living had been rising in the Soviet Union since the 1950s pretty steadily. But that gets derailed because the leadership there decided that they had to compete with the United States they couldn't get the United States get, let me know get this strategic edge. And so that undermined support for the for the government support for the party. And it led to the crisis that eventually does bring down the the East European social estates the the Soviet Union, and, and you know, gives rise to this triumphalist end of the Cold War. And that, you know, from from strictly a neutral sort of historical perspective Reagan strategy worked Reagan's approach to that work. But there's a fundamental difference between that historical moment, and the one in which we find ourselves now, which, which is simply that China is not the Soviet Union. You know, China has already reached levels of material development and levels of of economic equity, I suppose you would say raising, you know, 800 million people out of poverty. You know, not that everybody's living high off the hog but but you know, people's basic needs are taken care of and they've they've developed an amazing health care system as we saw that saved literally millions of lives during the COVID pandemic. They've got an educational system that now is world class their research and development is the best on the planet. They're leading in the fight against climate change and global warming. There's all these things that China has achieved. And it has, you know, the government and the party leadership there have massive support from ordinary people in China. In a way that that certainly by the by the height of the arms race with the Soviet Union that the Soviet leadership lost right they lost that mass support. And that's the fundamental difference that China is not going anywhere, you know, this these efforts this arms race it's it's classic strategy it's like we're going to, you know, we're going to ramp things up we're going to spend money we're going to you know engage in all this activity and of doing the existing stockpiles of old weaponry at places like Ukraine or, you know, given it to Israel or whatever we're doing with it to make sure that we have as many wars going as possible. You know, all that this is this is just party time for the for the military industrial complex that that's one strategy and that's something that you know they're the Cold War leadership that we have like like Joe Biden who is one of the last true players they think they're going to replay that same scenario but that is not it's just that's not who the players are now that's not that's not what's going to happen now, which makes it an extremely dangerous policy because China. You know, they're certainly their military capabilities have been enhanced in recent years. They're not an aggressive military but they are certainly prepared to defend themselves in ways that I think the United States is only beginning to to take So that makes it a very, very dangerous kind of moment because war could break out all these provocations in the South China Sea and around Taiwan and all this stuff all the hateful rhetoric that gets directed about China. You know it creates a situation where you know as as Chairman Mao used to say in a very different way, a single spark can start a prairie fire. It means that you know things can run off the rails. The lesson maybe from World War one is that if you're at that level of intense confrontation and intense militarization, even if it's only largely on one side, a minor event can trigger things that lead to a global conflagration. And now, of course, you know, we all know that with nuclear weapons what that means is is not just a lot of people, you know fighting on battlefields but potential destruction of much of the human race. So it's a dangerous strategy. And again, there's Kurt Campbell right at the heart of that you know the Center for New American Security his time at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. All of these have been efforts on his part to articulate a rationale, a justification for these policies that doesn't take seriously the kind of existential threat that they pose. Yeah, I feel like, especially with regards to, you know, the strategy of proxy wars as a way to provoke conflict, you know, at China as our enemy we've spoken to folks from Okinawa folks from around the age of Pacific folks from Guam. And the strategy, Campbell's strategy of militarizing these places creates fears amongst people who live there that they're going to be targets, they're going to be the first casualties. And these are people like what if it's in the case of, you know, US occupied Guam, people who are colonized and have no wish to be part of, you know, cold war power rivalry. And also in cases like the Philippines or Japan or in Korea, you know, they also don't want to be in the middle of something like this something like a conflict between two powers so, you know, as if Campbell actually becomes Deputy Secretary of State, what does policies mean for those communities and places like US occupied Guam and places like the Philippines where, you know, we've just set up new military bases or set up an agreement to create more places like Papua New Guinea in Okinawa. What are those places? Well, I think that the, you know, the pivot to Asia, the whole, I suppose we could call it sort of the Campbell doctrine almost, is one of deploying more and more military assets as they like to call them military resources, whether that's weapons systems going to Taiwan or actual bases being established or expanded and to get as many places as possible, you know, with a kind of, you know, they talk about the first island chain and then there's a sort of second line of all this, because there's an understanding at some level, especially on the part of, you know, serious military people over at the Pentagon, that, you know, a war with China isn't going to be something that is going to be a walkover, you know, and so, you know, they want to have, I suppose you would say some depth. So, you know, yeah, bringing in places like Papua New Guinea, bringing in, you know, there's been so much anxiety recently on the part of the foreign policy elites about, you know, China's activities in the western Pacific, you know, developing better relationships, for example, with the Solomon Islands. You know, the United States has been ignoring those countries, those island countries in the western Pacific, who, incidentally, of course, find themselves among the most vulnerable places in the world to rising sea levels, global warming, climate change, all this, about which the United States is doing nothing. In fact, less than nothing continuing to ramp up its carbon production. But, you know, now suddenly, the United States is interested in the western Pacific again, we've got an embassy in the Solomon Islands again, which we haven't had since the 1970s. You know, and it's, you know, people out there understand that this is completely a function of wanting to use them as buffers against China, and that, you know, whether it's frontline situations like Japan or Okinawa, Korea, Taiwan, or, you know, a little bit further back, it's all part of a package, it's all part of a network of bases and assets of other kinds. And some of it is, of course, it's like intelligence assets, listening stations, listening posts, things like that, which are scattered around in Southeast Asia. It's trying to create an all-encompassing net, if you will, that they can then sort of tighten to try to constrain in China. And once again, it's a fool's errand, China is going about its business, it has its own international engagements, it's been very successful in developing its relationships with countries in other parts of Asia and Africa and Latin America. And, you know, this is, the United States is kind of desperately trying to hang on to its hegemonic position. And, you know, so a figure like Kurt Campbell, you know, becoming deputy secretary of state for Asia-Pacific, on one level it makes perfect sense because that's what both the major political parties want. That's what the Biden administration wants, that's what, you know, that's what the Republicans want. You listen to Republican senators and congressmen, they're, you know, if anything trying to push even harder on those things. So having Campbell come into that position, you know, in some ways it's the logical culmination of his whole career and this whole process of developing this. But it's a very dangerous prospect for the American people, for the Chinese people, for people in other parts of Asia and the world. And, you know, what we need is not just, I mean, we certainly would be great to block Kurt Campbell's appointment. But also, it's, we have to find ways to get the Biden administration or whoever comes in in January of 25 to take seriously the idea that they need to find ways to cooperate and collaborate in the construction of a new and better world rather than trying to hold on to the power and the privileges that they've enjoyed for so long. Yeah, that's a very, I think, prescient understanding of, you know, what exactly the Campbell legacy amounts to and where it's headed. And, you know, I also, you know, would be remiss for like not bringing up how when I attended Campbell's nomination hearing, he really also echoed a pan-global foreign policy vision that really includes a lot of the same failed policies of armed intervention. You know, he said that he wouldn't place conditions on sending arms to Israel, even though they're currently inflicting a genocidal war in Palestine. He said that, you know, he, you know, proudly talked about his academic background studying Soviet policy in Africa and said that he'd also be focusing on, you know, minerals in the African continent. And of course that has lots of implications with AFRICOM, what's happening in Somalia, what's happening in, you know, Congo and other places. So he even said that he wouldn't get back into the Iran deal. And I just have to ask, like, from your perspective, you know, is there any kind of like, why do you think Campbell is rejecting diplomacy and opting for militarism on all of these fronts when he's supposed to be, you know, essentially auditioning for a diplomatic position? Well, diplomacy, you know, diplomacy works if you have sort of shared interests and what you're trying to do is find a path forward that both parties or however many parties are involved in negotiations or in building an organization or a relationship. If they have a common agenda, they may have disagreements about how to pursue it, but you know, those are things that can be worked out. And that's what diplomacy historically has largely been about. Even if it's a situation where you have, you have, you know, states that perhaps have conflicting interests in a particular area, you know, the objective there should be to go in and figure out, OK, how can we, how can we resolve this in a way that's going to yield the maximum benefit for both sides in a realistic sort of way. That's one kind of diplomacy. That's what diplomacy perhaps really ought to be. But the United States has sort of forfeited its position as a country that other countries are going to see as having their interests at heart. The United States, especially as our domestic economy has eroded and declined. And as our global capital efforts have kind of faced some challenges, faced some stalling out here and there. As other centers of wealth production have emerged and have grown so that the US no longer is in its dominant position. What we have still, we have two things. We have two major weapons to deploy. One is financial control. All these sanctions, this sanction regime that we run, you know, trying to hurt people in countries around the world so that they will be under their governments and force them either to be overthrown or to change. That system hasn't worked, but we remain dedicated to to sanctioning everybody we can possibly think of. But the real muscle, of course, is is military and the United States remains a tremendously powerful military society. We have our military industrial complex, of course, gets, you know, billions and billions and dollars in money from the American taxpayers to to, you know, build all these weapons and they got to go somewhere. If those companies are going to be profitable, somebody has to buy them and ideally use them, you know, so that they'll be in demand for more. So on the one hand we have we have that driving policy, the idea that that we got we got to keep cranking this military stuff out there. But also the only thing the United States has to persuade other countries to do what we want them to do is military force or the threat of military force. And so, you know, we see that playing out in Ukraine and Eastern Europe. We see that playing out in Syria and the Middle East we see it playing out in Africa we see it playing out in other parts of the world and of course right now. You know, the most horrifying stuff going on with with Israel's genocide against the Palestinian people and and the Biden administration and the Republicans in Congress seem absolutely dedicated to pouring as many billions as they can possibly come up with into the Israeli war machine. And that's just, you know, it's it's obviously it's it's so wrong, but it's consistent with the idea that that's all we've got that's the only real card that we have to play. And so, you know, this organist this focus on security and security is just a code word for the military for militarization. That's been the focus of Campbell's that's been the backdrop the underpinning of Campbell's approach all along the pivot to Asia wasn't about let's redeploy economic development resources let's redeploy humanitarian assistance. It was about military assets and building this this ring of containment around China. That's, that's what they've got and that's what they, they have demonstrated they're willing to to use that they're willing to sacrifice, especially other countries, people, but also, you know, if necessary, you know, we'll send we'll send 10s of 1000s of American troops over. As we did in Afghanistan and Iraq, even if in the end the outcome is is completely counter to what we said we were going to try to do what happened to state building what happened to humanitarian assistance it's it just that those programs were totally sidelined in the in the foregrounding of the deployment of brutal force. Yeah, I really appreciate that perspective. Professor and you know, for me it just really is a good reminder of why it's so important that we mobilize to block Kurt Campbell's nomination for Deputy Secretary of State at a time when there's escalations happening around the world US militarism is targeting so many people targeting a country of 1.4 billion people like China. Another nuclear armed country is very, very dangerous and I think, you know, it's of the utmost importance that we actually work as you were saying before towards reconsidering our policy towards China and actually embracing diplomacy cooperation. Human centered security and, you know, I have to say that your perspective is a light in these very harrowing times. So, thanks so much for for sharing everything you shared with us today. Well, it's been a pleasure being here and nice nice talking with you.