Examining the Military Industrial Complex
Here’s a wonderful piece that Bernie Sanders made using the words of four-star general and Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Of course, these words were ignored, and now the military industrial complex is a juggernaut at least as powerful as anyone at the time imagined. The U.S. has a three-quarter trillion dollar budget for war machines and personnel. We make bombs in Texas that are dropped on women and children in Yemen. Our Pentagon is planning for never-ending war.
My prayer is that there remains a majority of Americans with a reasonable set of values, such that the metaphorical pendulum will swing back with a new presidential administration and we can begin to spend our wealth elsewhere. Because of the enormity of the military enterprise, this will be a difficult thing to rein back, but it can be done when enough people feel that way and let their voices be heard.
Craig,
The article by Robert L. Borosage, in The Nation displays the usual fuzzy, “have it both ways” thinking of liberal Democrats.
The author while confirming the value of President Trump’s policies, in the same paragraph castigates the President for pursuing those policies effectively ! In other words, the Robert Borosage would like to agree with the President’s policies, but hates the President so the president must be wrong, even if his policies are correct.
That will always the problem confronting American administrations, “world peace” is not a trite phrase used by “kumbaya” politicians and banal beauty pageant hopefuls, a noble, but hopelessly unrealistic objective.
There will always be conflict and warfare, the best we can hope for is containing the conflagrations and keeping such conflicts on as small a scale as possible.
The US is caught in a difficult dilemma, can it. (and more importantly, should it) continue with the self-appointed delusion of being the “world’s policeman” ? Can, or should, the US continue to be involved in never-ending civil wars in remote places around the globe ? Decades of such involvement has revealed US military capacity can never resolve these conflicts, just create a state of endless US “occupation”.
President Trump’s policies are far more subtle. The President’s astute use of US commercial and economic power, while reserving US military might as a viable treat is proving far more effective. For all his bluster, President Trump seldom deploys US military force, and if deployed only with limited, easily disengaged objectives.
Understandably, the President has met with enormous opposition from the Pentagon. Understandably, career service personnel see troop withdrawals and disengagement as a threat to chances of promotion and job security. Many in the military believe strongly in “Pax Americana”, and see disengagement as a sign of American Weakness.
Others argue the US arms industry is one of the few industrial enterprises where America still displays preeminence and for the sake of national security and the US economy, this sector needs being maintained at full capacity.
Wandering around in this dynamic are woolly headed pundits like Sen.Bernie Saunders. Senator Saunders and his fellow democrats call President Trump a dangerous warmonger, yet complain when he disengages the US military from foreign conflicts.
Senator Saunders and the anti-Trumpers squealed with alarm at the President’s policy of insisting wealthy, industrialized allies pay for their own defense instead of relying on the US, as “disastrous and dangerous offending our allies” and “weakening the free world” and caving into to Putin.
In reality, the President’s policies worked have been a spectacular success ! NATO, Japan etc, quickly moved to increase their defense budgets, increase military training etc, while a combination of selective economic measures and sanctions contained and curtailed Putin’s ability to cause trouble.
The US administration understands Russia is a spent force, barely able to survive economically, and has turned us focus on the far more difficult task of containing rising Chinese nationalism and international expansionist ambitions.
As the article correctly points out , China’s rise as a “superpower” has been funded at US expense for 30 years. Curiously, the article then attributes President Trump for this state of affairs, while offering no alternative to the President’s policies.
In fact, that’s really what such articles always offer, a list of complaints about what’s wrong, but no viable solutions. Typical of fuzzy liberal Democrat advocacy. Lots of high minded rhetoric, but no practical answers when asked “how” or for details of alternate policies.
A much better article from The Nation’s Aaron Maté, analyses the absurd fantasy that’s grown up around the treat of “Russian” election interference. The article by a normally leftist author correctly identifies the minuscule effect of ” Russian meddling” has been insignificant in comparison to the wreckage caused by US panic, FBI and US Intelligence agencies, the US media, Mueller etc.
The article, ” New Studies Show Pundits Are Wrong About Russian Social-Media Involvement in US Politics; Far from being a sophisticated propaganda campaign, it was small, amateurish, and mostly unrelated to the 2016 election” , is well worth reading.
[ https://www.thenation.com/article/russiagate-elections-interference/ ]