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TechnoratiAs Its Economic Power Wanes, Does the US Lean Harder on the Military?
The current economic crisis holds enormous dangers, even beyond its direct threat to jobs, homes, savings, and the well-being of millions of ordinary people in the U.S. The challenge will be, as ever, to find within the dangers the opportunities for positive change.
One rarely acknowledged danger is that while U.S. economic clout in the world is dropping dramatically, there is no concomitant drop in Washington's drive to remain the dominant power in the world. That means that as U.S. economic power wanes and with it, the diplomatic and political influence that follows money, what's left is military force.
The militarization of U.S. foreign policy is hardly a new phenomenon - since 9/11, the drive to privilege and empower the Pentagon while sidelining and underfunding the State Department has elevated the military to a primary role in both creating and implementing foreign policy. Even aside from the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. global arms sales this year skyrocketed to $32 billion (almost triple the already excessive $12 billion in 2005 arms sales). The emphasis on militarizing foreign policy overall is evident also in the Bush administration's push for NATO expansion, arming Poland with a supposedly defensive "anti-missile" system, providing massive military support to Georgia - all acts designed to militarily challenge Russia's rising economic influence. And as the current financial meltdown leaves Washington with fewer economic tools to confront Moscow's newly expansive oil-fueled wealth and power, such military provocations threaten to become far more common and thus far more dangerous.
As to ignored opportunities, we come back again to those disastrous wars. Just a few days before Congress passed the $700 billion Wall Street bailout bill (which tops $800 billion when all the tax-break sweeteners are added), it passed another massive spending bill with almost no one paying attention. It was the defense bill: $613 billion for the "regular" military budget, above and beyond this year's $182 billion bill in direct costs for the actual wars the Pentagon is fighting today.
When we hear about the consequences of the $700-plus Wall Street bailout, we hear a lot about inevitable cuts in other budget items. But the military budget - not to mention the supplemental budgets to continue fighting illegal and useless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - is somehow never on the list of those items that could be cut. The result of these wars is hardly an issue any longer - all experts admit that the occupation of Iraq has not eliminated but rather encouraged and strengthened terrorist forces. Almost 70% of Americans believe the Iraq War should never have been launched; the top British general has recently said directly that the war in Afghanistan can't be won.
War production doesn't create real economic health - what do all those fancy missile systems, space weapons, battleships, even tanks and Humvees, produce other than a lot of dead Iraqis and dead Afghans? What better way to "bail out" our battered economy than to provide real jobs to soldiers drafted by lack of opportunities and to redirect the hundreds of billions of war spending into green jobs, rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, training new teachers, and building new schools? And what better place to find the funds to do that than to end the wars - now - and slash the military budget.
12 Comments so far
Show AllThe long run mediates against a massive upgrade of the military industrial complex. Barack Obama has stated that he wants us to withdraw from Iraq, and part of the reason for that withdrawal is that the money can be much better spent at home on infrasturcture and human needs for sustaining our economy.
While the dollar has revalued tremendously in the short term, in the long term, it will devalue as more and more defecit spending is produced in an attempt to promote economic stimulation. It remains an open question as to whether domestic needs will take precedence over the demands of military replenishment, but there is no question that promotion of multi-billion dollar programs for fuel cell development, for example, are much wiser investments than a similar amount spent on high tech military technology. The devaluation of the dollar will squeeze the military-industrial complex like a lemon, as it will become considerably more expensive over time to maintain our forces at current levels abroad.
The European Union and Great Britain effectively took our car keys away when it came to the current economic crisis, and continued cooperation with the G-7 and G-20 by the US is absolutely essential if we're going to avoid an even deeper depression than what we'll experience. More than one commentator has compared our current economic debacle to Great Britain and France in Suez in 1956. That marked the end of widespread British and French imperialism, simply because neither country could no longer afford that luxury.
The same fate awaits us.
The money we have spent on the war is about equal to the money that will be used by the banks to bail them out with hopefully some for the businesses and home owners, which is about the same amount of money we spend importing oil. I think this amount of money is about what we spend on the military each year. Maybe the government can start having bake sales, or run the whole thing on lotteries.
Sioux Rose
NY CARTIST: It's evident in the likes of The Daily Show and SNL for starters that in times as rigid as ours, only the FOOL (comedian) can tell the king the truth. Now with the wall between church and state about as solid as our 3 separate co-equal branches of so-called government, a little well-aimed ridicule is necessary.
It has been suggested that when the economy goes way down, even more, like "the evil Empire", there will not be money for war. Will there? I also heard complaints that the military doesn't have parts to fix trucks,etc in Iraq. And I agree, just to say "cut the military" in any way, gets branded as "unpatriotic". Congress could have stopped sales to other countries.
"And I agree, just to say "cut the military" in any way, gets branded as "unpatriotic".
There is nothing unpatriotic about saying cut military spending. Nothing at all. I love my country, I have nothing but respect for our serving military, I'm fully aware that we cannot do without a military force and let me say....cut military spending.
Military power cannot be maintained without economic power.
There is no reason at all we cannot reduce our military spending and increase our military effectiveness. None at all.
Our economy is not near collapse, but we are going to have to pay the piper for the mistakes we have allowed and return to the America we once were.
"There is no reason at all we cannot reduce our military spending and increase our military effectiveness."
100% correct. The fact that the US military is muscle-bound is demonstrated daily in on-going conflicts. Today's US forces were predicated on major battlefield warfare with another superpower, but unfortunately, we have discovered asymmetric warfare being conducted on battlefields the width of a road, and all that hi-tech weaponry and skilled operators sits idle.
Actually, what is needed is not only a smaller defensive military force, but a stronger State Department which was strongly marginalized by the Bush Administration.
Very sensible and realistic article, so it will never fly in the USA. Any talk of trimming the obscene, bloated military will evoke howls of "surrender, isolationest, wimp, betray the troops", etc. So don't look for pundits or politicians at the elite level to stop blustering and pushing for war, conflict, death, and destruction...everywhere.
If the US cannot manage to significantly reduce military spending in the expected poor economic environment of the next few years, the US economy will certainly collapse (as Chalmers Johnson has argued for years) and never will a nation have more deserved its fate.
An animal against the wall will fight.
Sioux Rose
It's believed by mystics that when souls cross over (leave their physical bodies behind) they must answer for their decisions while embodied on earth. With that being said, that the vast majority in powerful enough positions to influence public policy have so nakedly chosen guns over butter could not prove more evident, and it IS a crime against humanity and the children of many lands. That the global trafficking in weapons continues to increase while nations fail to work together to come up with quick green technologies to implement is a testament to the worship of Mars, the lust for violence instead of a mutually shared respect for life, and will to put down arms to join hands in the interests of sustaining it for all. The spiritual hierarchy must wonder how a species given to such high promise has instead conspired for its own undoing. This nation was a brilliant experiment in the will of the people. Its 3 branches of power an ingenious mechanism by which to hold in check, the darker impulses of history's long list of "unitary executives," a/k/a dictators/czars/tyrants. Hard to believe that unlike cream where the best stuff rises, in our society the ones quickest to step over others to get to the top of the heap have amassed power and regardless of party affiliation, worked together to essentially take this great experiment down. Our check book is a reflection (as a nation) of our priorities, bankrupt. For all the BS about religion, the spiritual estate of America is that of the soul sold out... there will be a resurrection process, but hardly painless.
Hi Srose, Talk of religion always reminds me of Lenny Bruce. He had a whole bit on the heads of all the religions having a meeting around a big table and talking about sales. He got arrested in Chicago for making fun of the church.