War is our Profession

By  J.M. Hamilton

Apparently, peace is no longer our profession…

In 1961, in a career noted for stability, sobriety, and not prone to embellishment, Eisenhower gave his farewell address to the nation, and an unprecedented warning.  President Eisenhower stated:

“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex (MIC). The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted.  Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

Merchants of Death

The President’s warning was highly prescient.  Observe, the following facts and figures generated, approximately, fifty years later: 

* Depending upon whose figures one believes, the U.S. spends more on defense, annually, than all the other nations in the world combined, and certainly more than the G-20.

* The top ten U.S. government contractors in the nation, by revenue, are all defense contractors.

* The military industrial complex now makes up 5.6% of GDP, a sizable figure in the world’s largest economy.

* In terms of arms export, the U.S. leads the world with a 40% market share, that’s a whole lot of hell being peddled around the world. (How much ends up, directly or indirectly, in enemy hands?)

With concentration of wealth comes political power.  In order to keep the war-machine humming, and to better justify government defense expenditures, and prevent “peace dividends,” America’s defense industry must have an enemy, and a never ending arms race among nations, as the technology, dedicated to controlling and killing man, continually improves.

Presently, the U.S. finds itself in two hot wars, and covert operations throughout the globe, while running deficits and national debt that are precarious.  Military spending and war was a significant driver of the sudden and sharp uptick in national debt that accrued over the last decade, with trillions in debt raised to pay for the war effort.

Much of U.S. military activity, today, was derived by 9-11, and knowing what we know now, quite possibly, the military outreach/over reach was a complete overreaction to a gang of third world terrorist, many of whom Ronald Reagan formerly employed in successful efforts to bring down the Soviet Union.  Say what one will about President Reagan, he was intelligent enough to topple the Soviet Union without utilizing the U.S. military in a hot war; instead, Mr. Reagan smartly employed proxy/indigenous/guerrilla forces to aid that campaign.   The very same forces the U.S. is fighting in Afghanistan, today, were formerly called the mujahedeen (or freedom fighters), when they were America’s ally and shed their blood willingly to aid in bringing down the Soviet empire; and today, these same mujahedeen are labeled the Taliban or America’s enemy. 

Mr. Reagan’s success, however, was not good for MIC financial statements.

Having gone through the 80’s and the 90’s without a major war, and with all kinds of happy talk about “peace dividends” and the “end of history,” our friends in the MIC weren’t having it.  Enter Vice President Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary and CEO of Halliburton, and of course, the 9-11 crew that brought down the World Trade Center.   And with the success of the first Gulf War (presided over by the highly competent George H.W. Bush) largely washing way fears, lessons, and any objection created by  a less successful war in Indochina, fought a couple of decades earlier, the U.S. entered into the graveyard of empires, and a cycle of endless war.

Profits for the MIC soared!

Graveyard of Empires

After nearly a decade of war in Afghanistan none of the grievances of Mesopotamia’s vox populi have been addressed, which leaves America more deeply in debt, winded, more cynical about military power, and less able, financially or militarily, to handle the next crisis –which may truly, require a military campaign.

After slugging it out in Iraq, and continuing to do so in Afghanistan, the root causes of the evil visited upon innocents in NY and in Washington D.C. in 2001 are still on full display: world dependence upon middle east oil; the U.S. propping up oppressive dictatorships throughout the middle east with petrol dollars and free military support; and those same dollars going to finance the grinding injustice executed upon middle east citizenry by their respective governments, which only serves to create more terrorist and anger at America (a vicious circle).

The vacuum in government service created by the corrupt and ineffectual regimes (e.g. Karzai) is filled all too willingly by the order imposed by terrorist regimes; no matter how back ward the societal structure imposed.  Witness the recent return of “stoning” in Afghanistan.  No, not as a means to get “high” in this narco-terrorist state, but as a means to meet out justice.

As the departing U.S. commander of military operations in Afghanistan recently observed in the pages of Rolling Stone:  for every innocent civilian killed in Afghanistan ten terrorists are created.

Of course, thanks to the defense industry, the arms merchants have  gotten better at their task... the ratio of dead enemy combatant (and collateral damage)to deceased coalition forces only improves with each war; which is supposed to make the mayhem and carnage more palatable, or better yet, something to be forgotten and ignored.

But, did I tell you MIC profits are up?

Killing is our Business… Business is Good.

Today, with the terrorist fear factor largely played out and deficits ever spiraling, the writing in red ink is somewhat on the wall.  Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has put the Pentagon on notice that cut backs are on the horizon, not due to a peace dividend this administration is careful to emphasize, but to better bring about efficiencies and to better prepare for the next war.  

Would that be the next world war to lead us out of our current Great Recession?

Mr. Gates, with expertise in military matters unsurpassed, has even targeted a few military spending programs for the chopping block, such as extra C-17 Cargo planes, redundant engines for the F-35 fighter, and a Joint Forces Command Center in Virginia.  Such is the power and sway of the MIC that politicians are already lining up to defeat Mr. Gates efforts…  Deficits and debt be damned.

Despite the enormous drag the MIC puts on American finances and the taxpayer, the distortions it creates in the economy and in the labor market, and chiefly, the crowding out effect the MIC creates in the credit markets (as government borrows to pay for MIC products and services and finance wars), the MIC roars on, unquestioned and under- analyzed.  And as long as the MIC remains the 800 pound gorilla in the room, almost certainly aligned with such powerful interests as Wall Street Banks (who receive commissions and fees for financing war debt) and Big Oil (whose products and interests are protected by the MIC), there is possible incentive to invent enemies, and exaggerate the power of real enemies, that spawn war.  As a result, America today, finds itself on a permanent war footing, and because “wolf” has been cried so many times, ill prepared and too distracted to fight our real enemies.

As soon as there is a lull in the next quarterly MIC financial statement, one might expect the arrival of a new enemy or a resurgent boogeyman.   Of course, there is that mother of all endless wars that the MIC can rely upon, the forty year old war on drugs, the lessons of Prohibition America having been entirely lost upon our elected officials.

And the historical lessons?  Well, America was not always the biggest kid on the block… we once were a small but proud nation, and our founding fathers, correctly, led us to believe the following: be weary of foreign entanglements; and dread the infringement upon freedoms (social, political and economic) that a standing army may create. 

Lessons not lost upon many of our, alleged, allies in the G-20. 

“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes … known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.… No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”

— James Madison, Fourth President of the U.S.

To the military men and women who serve, this nation owes an eternal debt.  Whether the war or battle fought was necessary, or a political contrivance, many of the men and women who wear the uniform for this nation should be canonized.   But to the bloated MIC, moral hazard defined, and the politicians who vote largess for same, we owe vigilant and constant scrutiny.  Mr. Madison knew his topic well.

Ultimately, one wonders if the market place has a role in reining in the MIC, since our politicians have failed.  If the true costs of running the MIC were transferred from the American tax payer to the true beneficiaries of America’s exercise of martial power…  would corporations, multi-nationals and the G-20 insist upon a greater say in how America’s military prowess is utilized and how that monolithic budget is spent?  Absolutely!   Blood and war are a tremendous expense.

http://blog.jmhamiltonpublishing.com/2010/07/31/no-more-afghanistans-3.aspx