The War on the Moon
by Brian Patrick Bolger (February 2023)
Silver Moon, Albert Pinkham Ryder, 20th C
There was a time when the HG Wells story War of the Worlds, made into a horrific musical score by Jeff Wayne, was pure fantasy. A time when The Dark Side of the Moon was an album by Pink Floyd and stand-up comedians like Norm McDonald could make jokes about the Chinese and pederasty in prisons. Star Wars and Planet of the Apes were merely the paranoia of the cold war.
Yet now, with the James Webb telescope discovering an earth-like planet and the US military deciding to colonise cislunar space, a war in space is about as far fetched as the Ginger Prince marrying Lady Macbeth of California. The time has arrived when strategic thinking shifts from earth to moon, to space.
The US has plans to set up a ‘highway patrol’ between the earth and moon. The strategy is now dominated by the Pentagon, not NASA. Yet the Chinese have a plan to build a lunar base on the moon in 2024 along with a deal with Russia to jointly fund another station on the moon. A memorandum between NASA and the newly created ‘Space Force’ states that the military wing of the partnership will reach to 272,000 miles to the ‘Far Side of the Moon.’ That is not an album by Pink Floyd.
Yet the main impetus of military protection is to defend commercial interests. Defending commercial interests brings us full circle back to the resource-dominated conflicts on earth. From maritime colonisation in the nineteenth century, the nation states of modernity are bent on unending resource domination. Just as the British East India Company, founded in 1600, soon realised that a navy was necessary to police the Indian Ocean and beyond of pirates, the US recognises that control of the space seas means control of the lucrative future space trade.
‘The Outer Space Treaty of 1967′ is not an album by Jefferson Airplane. It is a real treaty forbidding military bases or weapons testing on the moon. Yet it’s a grey area—with experiments and exploration allowed. The US is pushing the limits of space tolerance. Another agency, the ‘Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’ plans to extract resources for potential military use. There is talk of logistical spacecraft and a ‘mothership’ and alliances with the private commercial sector so that a permanent home can be developed.
The problem with ‘Technics’ is that, what ostensibly begins as single use, inevitably becomes militarised, like, for example, nuclear power, airplanes and ginger princes. The present paradigm of world strategy is a convergence of technics and resource scarcity. Just as Imperialism (Lenin’s ‘highest stage of capitalism), saw the nation states devouring the resources of Asia and Africa, so too will the next phase of homo sapiens’ ‘evolution’ see the Icarus leap into space. Faustian man, or rather the Faustian elites, having once killed God and jumped, Nietzsche-like into the abyss, have nowhere else to turn.
Space Force are also developing the ‘Defense Deep Space Sentinel,’ a satellite capable of ‘space object removal and recovery’ which can ‘respond to potential threats.’ It doesn’t take a giant leap of thinking to see the implications of ‘dual use.’ For the moment, a military base on the moon is off the table, but for how long? Recently a new organisation was set up called the ‘Space Force Warfighting Analysis Center.’ The whole space program is turning into Dungeons and Dragons.
If we were able to communicate with ‘earth-like’ planets, via the Internet or pigeons, it would be decent to fly off a few warnings to their possible inhabitants. We could give them some sage advice, the hindsight of the disastrous historical journey of mankind throughout history. Those tips might include to avoid industrialisation, nuclear energy, TV and Cars. It should include banning the Internet and mobile phones. This may help them to avoid The Guardian, Coldplay, Harry and Meghan, correct pronouns, men who identify as ‘Julia,’ women who identify as ‘Derek’ and McDonalds.
Yet these poor creatures on Planet 4823 don’t have a chance. Before you can say ‘I Love Diversity,’ the place will be swamped by US and Chinese transgender astronauts selling the dream: Tony Blair Consultancy Inc, Florida-like condos, gender therapy clinics. The new plantation of politically correct robots will be clicking away on moonlit computer screens. History will start again at year zero and Blackrock, having completed the reconstruction of the Ukraine, will be handed the licences to begin the mining and resource scraping of the Moon.
That multi headed monster ‘Resources R’US’ rears its ugly face again. But this time on the virgin moon. And then on Planet 7612 until ‘homo sapiens’ are all shipped off to work for the minimum wage in the only restaurant chain in the Universe: ‘Moonraker.’
Table of Contents
Brian Patrick Bolger studied at the LSE. He has taught political philosophy and applied linguistics in Universities across Europe. His articles have appeared in New English Review, The National Interest, GeoPolitical Monitor, Voegelin View, The Montreal Review, The Hungarian Conservative, The Salisbury Review, The Village, The Burkean, The Daily Globe, American Thinker, The Internationalist, and Philosophy News. His book, Coronavirus and the Strange Death of Truth, is now available in the UK and US. His new book, Nowhere Fast: The Decline of Liberal Democracies will be published soon by Ethics International Press.
Follow NER on Twitter @NERIconoclast