None of the laundry list of “reasons” given by the Bush administration for launching a gulf war makes any sense.

This is the feeling of John Coatsworth, history department chairman at the University of Chicago and director of its council for advanced studies on peace and international cooperation.

Coatsworth spoke at a program sponsored by the DeKalb Interfaith Network and debunked each of the administration’s attempts to explain going to war.

He outlined what he sees as the real reasons Americans are being asked to sacrifice thousands of lives and billions of dollars.

The end of the Cold War in Coatsworth’s opinion led directly to U.S. involvement in a hot war. As long as the Soviet Union was a major superpower, it served as an effective deterrent to U.S. military adventures and vice versa.

The end of the Cold War, signalled by the collapse of the Berlin Wall in November, 1989, left the United States free to intervene militarily in other nations without fear of Soviet opposition—hence our two post-Cold War military interventions in Panama and the Persian Gulf.

Although formerly an Iraqi ally, the Soviet Union, instead of deterring us, is playing a supportive role.

The U.S. defense industry’s fears of a significant cutback in their slice of our national budget is another reason our troops are in the Gulf, according to Coatsworth.

Alarmed by the specter of a possible peace dividend which would reduce their enormous profits, some 55,000 or more weapons industry lobbyists and their military cohorts in Washington began dreaming up scenarios to rescue the military- industrial complex.

With even powerful establishment-types, like former chiefs-of-staff recommending a military cutback of 50 percent by the year 2000, they were desperate to come up with something to justify their annual raid on the national treasury and an expensive Persian Gulf war fit nicely.

Already, as we can see, the call for a peace dividend has been silenced, and the nightly display on our TV screens of sophisticated weaponry at work should easily ensure continuation of the bloated military budget.

Coatsworth believes there is an underlying geopolitical rationale for our participation in this war.

If we succeed in gaining military dominance in the Middle East, control of its strategic oil reserves will give us an advantage over our major trading partners—Japan and Western Europe.

Unlike the United States, which gets only a small part of its oil from the Middle East, both of them depend heavily on that region for much of their oil.

In the future, the enhanced probability of war among the iddle East states and the increased instability in the region will enable us to use a reminder of our stabilizing military presence there as a means of overcoming trade barriers and gaining favorable markets for U.S. products.

Such a use of America’s expensive military establishment for economic leverage with Japan and Europe would, Coatsworth feels, be immoral and stupid.

He objects to participation in the Gulf war not being part of a coherent policy doctrine defining when and where we’d send troops and when and where we wouldn’t send troops.

In this connection, he cited a string of recent situations prior to the Gulf in which the United States has used or proposed using troops, such as interdicting drugs or combatting state terrorism, lack of democracy in other nations, or the possession of oil and other natural resources by people we don’t like.

Since the list is almost endless, he feels this kind of military pragmatism is totally unacceptable and we should not approve any military intervention until we have a coherent policy.

By electing to become the world’s self-interested and self-appointed policeman, Coatsworth warns that the United States is mortgaging its own future and indeed shaping its future in a way most Americans would not approve.

With skyrocketing costs of today’s military, it is no longer possible to dominate the world militarily and maintain an acceptable standard of living for one’s population.

He spoke of the far greater benefits we would reap by investing a peace dividend instead in improving the education, health and productivity of our people so we could again compete successfully in the world market because of our products’ quality.

“So at end is the issue of what kind of country we are going to be. In the Gulf we have taken one more step in becoming a country that’s known for its military capacities and its crime, and for its racism, and, in some blocks in Chicago, an infant mortality rate that rivals Bangladesh—and that cannot educate its citizens to compete in the 20th century.”

Having taken in the Gulf one more step toward militarism and the inevitable social and economic decay that this brings, Coatsworth feels there is a draft coming.

Coatsworth’s advice to his audience was, “Protest, whenever and wherever you can!”

Cecile Meyer is a DeKalb citizen who writes on the war and the opinions of John Coatsworth.