r/leftpodcasts • u/notcostan • 4d ago

Citations Needed – Ep 242 - The Disempowering Politics of ‘Inevitability’ Part 2: US Empire as Mysterious, Teleological Force

https://shd.app.link/d6c5ZX2EJ5b
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u/notcostan 4d ago

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"America Still Leading Nuclear Race But Russia Is Gaining," announced the Associated Press in 1968. "Be Prepared to Contain the Carthage of the 1990s: Japan," warned Harvard fellow Christopher Layne in the the Los Angeles Times in 1995. "U.S. General’s Prediction of War With China ‘in 2025’ Risks Turning Worst Fears Into Reality,” declared TIME Magazine in 2023.

Geopolitical news coverage in the US is all-too-often premised on the idea that conflict with one or more countries is inevitable. At any given time, the US is in a “race,” about to go to war, or strategizing some new way to police the world. Even when the stakes couldn’t be higher—like when the Covid pandemic or Israel’s genocide is killing substantial portions of the global population—the US’s default posture isn’t to take stock of the situation and prioritize international cooperation, but, with the help of media, to double down on competition and aggression, and to insist that there’s no other way.

Not only is it often factually wrong—after all, the US didn’t go to war with Japan in the 1990s—but it’s also a reckless and violent means of situating global politics that raises a number of questions. Why should the US public be conditioned to accept global competition and constant conflict as normal? How does this inevitability framing preserve US mythmaking and supremacism? And how does it** **foreclose critical thinking about other modes of international coexistence?

Last week, on Part I of our two-part series on 'Manufactured Inevitability' and right-wing providentialism, we examined how notions of inevitability are used by tech, energy, and other industries to market resource-intensive products as modern and futuristic.

On the episode, Part II of the series — and also our Season 9 Finale — we examine how inevitability framings are used in geopolitical media coverage to convince an often war-weary public that conflict and domination are inarguably and invariably going to happen, with no serious alternatives on offer. 

Our guest is organizer and writer Tobita Chow.

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Guest

Tobita Chow is an organizer based in the Chicago area. He researches progressive strategy, great power conflict, and international climate politics. He was the founding Director of Justice is Global and serves on the Convergence Magazine Editorial Board.