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A Vortex of Death and Wealth
Whatever the strategic — and humanitarian — considerations behind NATO/U.S. intervention in Libya, a larger force utterly indifferent to both, and seldom sufficiently newsworthy to merit mention, unites tyrant and rescuer and keeps the world tangled in an endless cycle of hellish violence far beyond the scope of the conflict that generates it.
I’m talking about the global arms trade, for which wars large and small, whatever their cause, whatever their “legitimacy,” are necessities without which the goods would not move. They’re also more than that, but not the sort of thing we salute or honor with granite statuary.
“This” — the Libyan no fly zone — “is turning into the best shop window for competing aircraft for years. More even than in Iraq in 2003,” said Francis Tusa, editor of the UK-based newsletter Defense Analysis, quoted in a recent Reuters article by Tim Hepher. For instance, enforcement of the no fly zone pitted two European-made jet fighters, the Typhoon and the Rafale, against one another for world leaders to view, and France, Tusa pointed out, “is particularly desperate to sell the Rafale.”
This is the generally unstated truth about Western intervention in the Middle East and anywhere else in the world. The headline-generating acts of murderous repression by dictators, whether we love or abhor them, are made possible by weaponry and equipment they purchased from us. And then, when the time comes, we may have to attack our former business partners with the same weaponry we sold them.
“When it comes to Libya,” Hepher wrote, “Paris was almost as eager to take on Gaddafi as it was to open up military ties after the EU lifted an arms embargo on the country in 2004. But France was not alone in wooing the country after Gaddafi renounced weapons of mass destruction.”
Every country with an armaments industry, including, of course, the United States, which claims 30 percent of the world market in arms sales, wooed Gaddafi when his pariah status was lifted seven years ago. One of the diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks, from December 2009, mentioned an offer to Gaddafi’s younger son Khamis to “travel around the United States to tour U.S. military installations,” according to the Reuters article.
And Libya is small potatoes compared to — no surprise — Saudi Arabia. Last year, according to Spiegel Online, the U.S. announced the largest arms export deal in history with the Saudis. The oil-rich kingdom will buy $60 billion worth of U.S. aircraft over the next five to ten years. “Money is no object,” the article informs us, “and the Saudi air force is to receive F-15 fighter-bombers, Apache attack helicopters, missiles, radar equipment and bombs. All together, according to the Wall Street Journal, the order is large enough to guarantee 77,000 jobs at Boeing.”
An economic gusher of such magnitude overwhelms what we usually think of as politics, let alone what we think of as morality or humanity. The stakes are too high for geopolitics to be, at its core, about anything but armaments, unrest and war, over and over in a vortex of death and wealth. This is not just an American problem but a global one. If the United States gets all human-rightsy about a particular country and refuses to sell weapons to it, someone else will. The solution to this is beyond the scope of the nation-state or any transnational institution that currently exists, which are all based on the eternal inevitability of war. And the most important war is always the next one.
According to Tom Gjelten, who reported on the arms trade last month for NPR, there’s a certain bizarre security in all this: “The risk that countries receiving American arms might someday turn them against the United States is somewhat mitigated by their continued dependence on U.S. firms for spare parts.”
Gjelten went on to say, in a tone of macabre amorality that is characteristic of so much geopolitical reporting: “Defense contractors, however, now have to worry about reduced demand for their products, if the United States pulls back on arms transfers to the Middle East or if Middle Eastern governments choose to spend less money on U.S. weaponry and more on social programs, in order to calm their restive populations.”
This is always the sticking point for me, the last straw of outrage — the arrogant pseudo-objectivity of war reportage. The business worries of defense contractors are neatly and deftly turned into the worries of everyman, but meanwhile, the monstrous absurdity of the whole system, which has just been laid bare, hovers without mention.
And suddenly I thought about Harry Lime, Graham Greene’s memorable villain in the 1949 movie The Third Man, played by Orson Welles. Riding above the mass of humanity in a Vienna Ferris wheel, he says to his friend, who has just asked if he ever thinks about his victims:
“Victims? Don’t be melodramatic. Look down there. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax — the only way you can save money nowadays.”
35 Comments so far
Show AllObama recently went to Brazil, mainly as a front man, to sell them Boeing fighter jets. The salesman-in-chief for the arms industry.
What can be done to stop the MIC?
We can't boycott them, they own our legislators, they get over 50% of our country's money. They dictate policy to the Cabinet. They even write the daily intelligence briefing. They have privatized the "defense" industry. Blackwater (Xe) has a huge facility in NoVa just to spy on US citizens, all paid for by our tax dollars.
It's OK because the MIC provides "jobs" that pay very well, with the little caveat that the workers sell their souls. Very depressing.
Only way to stop the MIC is to choke them of their food, our tax dollars. It'll take a bigger man than Eisenhower to do it. The last 50yrs one prsident after the next has been carrying their water, because of Communisim, The Yellow Horde, now Terrorism. But all a president has to do is sit at his desk and VETO all the stupid weapons, and planes, subs, and tanks as they come to his desk.
Course he'll have to give up going outside, And most definatlly not go to any plays! But it can be done!
>^^<
The planet has to be sick of the human race.
The planet has no opinion it is just a rock in space, infected woth certian biological surfice malidies.
>^^<
"infected woth certian biological surfice malidies."
How long did you spend making that many mistakes? You have to be the very worst writer who ever shows up here.
Yes Neitzsche, Gaia is sick of our perversions against each other, Nature and her person. Doubtless, the "old girl" will shake us rats off her neck quite soon now.
Japan was just foreplay. Maybe the Richter Scale should go up to 20; buckle up!
Here is a real take on the corporate "UNITED STATES".
It's about our "Republic" or "Sovereign Citizen" status.
History even YOU didn't know.
http://youtu.be/PAu4O8hOXX0
To recognize victims would not only stifle the arms industry; it would bring the entire economy to a standstill. Once this argument is recognized, it lays bare the inhumane nightmare upon which capitalism, the American way, is built.
This brings to mind the account of the frustrations of construction engineers in old Tibet where the process went on at a snail's pace because monks sorted through every shovelful of dirt to rescue the worms who lived inside.
Please don't forget that the Weapons Industry is also a "jobs program" in the USA. Every Congressional District has a vested interest in keeping compliant to the Pentagon and the Weapons Industry.
The five permanent members of the UN Security council are the five biggest arms dealers. Conflict is a business model, written in blood.
Excellent article. The Saudi people will have no chance of overthrowing their oppressive regime now because of all the arms the U.S. so willingly sells to whoever wants them.
Only 30%? We only supply the world with 30% of arms? What is the matter with us? We could do better. Our economy would pick up! Of course, I am just kidding but I am sure it is more than 30%. Who do you think arms the world with nuclear weapons?
Maybe because of Russias 15yr old fire sale in arms all the AK74 and AK47 rifeles for $10 a 100, ammo by the tonne! Missles, Subs, Planes, everything must go! see Uncle Ivan.com for todays specials! lol
I'm gonna laugh myself sick when some tin-horn dictator with a used SovietNuke Torpedo starts sinking Trillion Dollar aircraft carrier groups, using 50yr old Soviet kilo Subs on batteries, cause were too busy listening for Nuke Cooling pumps in modern subs.
Better yet a Russian ship being takin out the same way. There are too many weapons floating around, for anybodys good!
>^^^<
And, yes, the taxpayer pays for the research and development of these weapons that the US contracts with the weapons companies to build through the defense department or the department of energy through NASA and the weapons manufacturer makes billions on the backs on the US taxpayer. This is American democratic capitalism or capitalism in America or the democratic way. You can call it what you want but it is wrong. It is ethically and morally wrong.
The hypocrisy, of a noble peace prize winner, is striking and offensive. Hawking jets to Brazil while serving humanity by destroying others in Libya is an explosive display of meaningless discourse--goobly gook.
This same shameful behavior is witnessed over blood diamonds, coltan, gold and, well about anything, a monster dictator will sell to the west. It is our money grubbers that enable the inhuman monsters to maintain power. (Mugabe case in point)
Oh the biggie! OIL- Autocrats, killers, brazen thieves and frauds are welcome at the shrines of freedom in D.C. if oil favored their geography.
The big secret is straight shooters do prosper ; truth and transparency will not oppress an American commuter!
I also think of that scene from The Third Man quite often when trying to consider what is going on with the MICs (military and medical). We are, indeed, but litlle dots. This is going to really surprise people when the shit really comes down-- USians aren't used to thinking of themselves as little dots. Muslims in the Mideast, Africans, Asians, sure, but US?
There are no end of classic lines from movies relevant to this sorry situation.
Another one that comes to mind is from "On the Waterfront"; by has-been boxer and longshoreman Terry Malloy: "Do you want to hear my philosophy of life? Do it to him before he does it to you."
Capitalism is all about killer instinct, and the self-confirming maxim that it's a dog-eat-dog world in which only the ruthless and best-equipped survive. Even "realists" who aspire to morality readily argue that even if Might isn't Right, it takes Might to do Right.
Anyone confronting an arms merchant, or eager customer, about the blood-soaked nature of the enterprise can expect to be shot down by iron-clad reasoning-- e.g., if we didn't sell and buy the stuff, somebody else would.
If we didn't sell the stuff someone else would.
I love how people think there is THIS planet over here, and THAT planet over there. And over on THAT planet things happen and it will never ever affect THIS planet over here.
There is no someone else.
Or somewhere else. We're all here and the mess that needs cleaning up is everyone's.
About thirty years ago, I briefly worked for a small record and tape distributor. It was owned by an ex-Marine, a one-time salesman who cashed in on the record boom when "Saturday Night Fever" was a smash hit.
This guy was a sucker for buying "hot" goods-- stuff either smuggled out from record company factories or bootleg knock-offs. Guys in beat-up vans with out-of-state plates would unload garbage bags of this junk.
Most of it was indeed junk-- disco music that had long since "stiffed out". Our regular buyer used to constantly bitch at the owner that the hot goods were worthless and taking up warehouse space to boot.
The owner had two iron-clad defenses: the price was right-- and if he didn't buy it, somebody else would. He thought that if he passed up the chance, the music would suddenly take off and give the competition a big payday.
If he'd stayed in the Marines, he'd probably have become one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
.
"No matter how cynical you get, it's impossible to keep up."
--Lily Tomlin
As Gjelten's "macabre amorality" clearly shows (and no doubt it went right over the heads of NPR producers and listeners) the whole thing is just a big business game where if we don't sell countries weapons of mass destruction, someone else will. Harry Lime in Greene's The Third Man anticipates Gjelten's amorality, as Koehler shows so concisely here. It's all just shuffling the chips on the poker table for these asslicking arms merchants. Humanity is groaning and screaming in agony with all these incessant, mindless wars, and the businessmen of war carry on without blinking an eye. Why don't we . . . oh, never mind. We won't.
Is this supposes to be 'news' or relevant information? I though everyone was aware of these facts before now! GEESH!!!
Yes, by all means, let's join with both the right and the left. Let's join hands with Glenn Beck, Ron Paul and Chris Hedges. Rally around Bill O'Reilly and Noam Chomsky. Anybody famous will do. They're all on the side of freedom and truth. Let's galvanize around fascists, centrists and socialists at the same time. Let's join forces with nothingists. It's all the same. Everybody famous is liberating! We're almost there already. I can feel it!
I was mocking you, so no, I'm not a crazy person. That would be you. You're also about as full of yourself as Charlie Sheen is.
Defence contractors will be the last to go. When everything else has been cut into nothingness and civilisation is bleeding to death, there will be nothing left but the giant monsters of military power to annihilate and cannabalise the rest. After a short period of chaotic wanton destruction there will finally be silence. Remaining humans are devolving into beasts. Some today are already half way.
Anyone out there familiar with the George Bernard Shaw
play, "Major Barbara"?
Undershaft (the arms manufacturer) always wins.
"The headline-generating acts of murderous repression by dictators, whether we love or abhor them, are made possible by weaponry and equipment they purchased from us. And then, when the time comes, we may have to attack our former business partners with the same weaponry we sold them."
What you mean, "WE" , white man??
Naming names is important. Start with "corporate oligarchy".
"And Libya is small potatoes compared to — no surprise — Saudi Arabia. Last year, according to Spiegel Online, the U.S. announced the largest arms export deal in history with the Saudis. The oil-rich kingdom will buy $60 billion worth of U.S. aircraft over the next five to ten years. “Money is no object,” the article informs us, “and the Saudi air force is to receive F-15 fighter-bombers, Apache attack helicopters, missiles, radar equipment and bombs. All together, according to the Wall Street Journal, the order is large enough to guarantee 77,000 jobs at Boeing.”
...As long as "we" accepted payment in US treasury bonds...?
: “The risk that countries receiving American arms might someday turn them against the United States is somewhat mitigated by their continued dependence on U.S. firms for spare parts.”
Same goes for mercenaries...XE? Corporations are required to maximize shareholder value and externalize costs. War is perfect for this, and corp "personhood" is the perfect shield.
A race to the bottom "we" are favored to win.