The Pentagon will get even more money, and the Americans will pay
The military budget is swelling by leaps and bounds, and Americans are becoming more vulnerable to real threats that cannot be defeated with weapons, the author of the Washington Post points out. In her opinion, if the United States intends to save the world, such an approach is both absurd and disastrous.
Katrina vanden Heuvel
There is such a split in Washington that agreement between the two parties is very rare. Except for one topic: the Pentagon budget.
From House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her fellow Democrats to Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his fellow Republicans, everyone agrees that the Department of Defense, whose budget is not only higher than in the Cold War, but also higher than the combined spending of the next nine countries with the highest military spending, deserves even more. They only argue about how much more.
Ironically, this single area of bipartisan consensus is by no means a sign that the truth is somewhere in between. Quite the opposite: the military budget is swelling by leaps and bounds, and Americans are becoming more vulnerable.
The pandemic has claimed the lives of more than a million Americans. Since there are still not enough vaccines in the rest of the world, and medicine leaves much to be desired, global losses continue to grow. And neither the US nor the rest of the world is even close to being ready for the next pandemic, which, given the global nature of our economy, will certainly come.
Last year alone, the United States was hit by 20 climate disasters, the damage from which exceeded a billion dollars. Now most of the western part of the country is threatened by drought. The central part is flooded. According to forecasts, the hurricanes will become even fiercer. Another victim of the devastating effects of climate warming is Yellowstone National Park, where floods also broke out from the sharp melting of snow. However, the Pentagon will receive even more money, and investments in the fight against catastrophic climate change are blocked by the Republican opposition in the Senate.
What are they for, these new defense spending? Part of it will go to the creation of bases and weapons in Asia to counter China. But the hobby of the Chinese is not military force, but a clever policy of mercantilism. They seize markets, block access to resources and investments, and dominate new industries and technologies of the future. New weapons and Pentagon bases will not cure our inability to invest in advanced research and development, in modern and efficient infrastructure and trade policy that will serve ordinary Americans, not international corporations.
The second goal is Russia. However, the most common arguments in favor of increasing military spending proved untenable: the conflict in Ukraine exposed the limitations of the Russian armed forces, and Germany and other NATO allies promised to sharply increase military spending. And yet, in some incomprehensible way, the Russian threat in the face of the Ukrainian campaign serves as an excuse for further growth of Pentagon spending instead of reducing it.
Everything is both logical and absurd. The United States has over 700 bases in almost 80 countries around the world. The Pentagon has conducted counterterrorism operations in at least 85 countries - almost half of all available on Earth. Now he is preparing to confront Russia and China at once. If the United States intends to save the world, the military budget will not be enough by definition. Moreover, such an approach is in principle both absurd and disastrous if we want to restore and preserve a healthy and prosperous democracy at home.
There is, of course, no logic or even security behind the bipartisan consensus on military spending. The Pentagon's spending is driven by the military-industrial complex, which President Dwight Eisenhower warned us against 60 years ago. Eisenhower turned out to be a visionary, but too optimistic. We have, as former intelligence officer Ray McGovern put it, "a bow of the military–industrial complex, Congress, intelligence, media, scientists and analysts" - the most powerful lobby in the world.
According to OpenSecrets, an authoritative and impartial source of information on campaign finance and lobbying, after September 11, the arms industry spent about $ 300 million on donations and election campaigns and $2.5 billion on lobbying, and this coincided with a sharp increase in Pentagon spending. Approximately 700 lobbyists work for the industry – one for each member of Congress. The Pentagon has essentially switched to the "communicating vessels" method: a recent report by the Government Accounts Chamber lists 1,700 generals, admirals and procurement officials who, after leaving the government, got a job at 14 major arms companies. According to a 2020 report, from 2014 to 2019, weapons contractors and the Pentagon invested more than a billion dollars in 50 of the country's leading think tanks – and this is another sinecure for the former military.
However, nothing compares to political ties and contracts with the defense industry, which provides jobs to key constituencies across the country. As William Hartung, a senior researcher at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Public Administration, recently reported, there is a map on the website of the leading US defense contractor Lockheed Martin, which shows 250,000 jobs related to the production of the problematic F-35 fighter. In addition, the company has subcontractors in 45 states and Puerto Rico.
When Congress approves the defense budget, bipartisan support will surely increase spending beyond what the Pentagon and the president have requested. However, despite the increase in military spending, Americans are increasingly vulnerable to real threats that cannot be defeated with weapons.