OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
If you believe that the United States is not creeping toward socialism, then what the Pentagon is doing may give you a reason to reconsider.
Next week, National Defense University’s Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy is hosting an event titled “Responding to China: The Case For Global Justice and Democratic Socialism,” the university’s website reported.
“The event will be held February 16, 2022, from 1200-1300, on the Strategic Multilayer Assessment platform and is open to the public. An access link will be posted the week of the event,” it said.
The event’s speaker is Thomas Piketty, who the university bio said is “a French economist who is Professor of Economics at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Associate Chair at the Paris School of Economics and Centennial Professor of Economics in the International Inequalities Institute at the London School of Economics. Piketty is the author of ‘Capital in the 21st Century (2013) and ‘Capital and Ideology’ (2020).”
And the summary of the event on the school website reads “Western countries are still struggling to define their attitude towards the Beijing regime. In this talk on February 22, 2022, Thomas Piketty will argue that the right answer lies in ending Western arrogance and promoting a new emancipatory and egalitarian horizon on a global scale, a new form of democratic and participatory, ecological and post-colonial socialism. If they stick to their usual lecturing posture and a dated hyper-capitalist model, Western countries may find it extremely difficult to meet the Chinese challenge.”
There are some big words in there but the gist is that Picketty believes Western nations, like the United States, are arrogant in their adherence to capitalism and that the answer to fighting China economically is to bend a knee to socialism.
The US Department of Defense (DoD) Strategic Multilayer Assessment (SMA) is sponsoring the event.
Picketty is the author of another book, that the school did not list on its website, titled “Time For Socialism.”
“As a correspondent for the French newspaper Le Monde, world-renowned economist Thomas Piketty has documented the rise and fall of Trump, the drama of Brexit, Emmanuel Macron’s ascendance to the French presidency, the unfolding of a global pandemic, and much else besides, always from the perspective of his fight for a more equitable world. This collection brings together those articles and is prefaced by an extended introductory essay, in which Piketty argues that the time has come to support an inclusive and expansive conception of socialism as a counterweight against the hyper-capitalism that defines our current economic ideology. These essays offer a first draft of history from one of the world’s leading economists and public figures, detailing the struggle against inequalities and tax evasion, in favor of a federalist Europe and globalization more respectful of work and the environment,” a description at Yale University Press said.
Former advisor to President Donald Trump, Sebastian Gorka, who worked as an Associate Dean at NDU, offered a scathing response to the event.
“I was Associate Dean at National Defense University before I taught for the Marine Corps University and then moved to the White House, and I am incensed at this betrayal of the mission of the DoD’s highest institution of learning,” he said in an email to Conservative Brief.
“NDU and the Eisenhower School have one job: to prepare our most senior officers to defeat our current and future enemies. Under the Biden and Secretary Lloyd Austin it is now a platform to propagate Socialism and indoctrinate and weaken our forces,” he said.
Conservative Brief has emailed National Defense University’s Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy for a comment and will update this story if it responds.
