Asia Times: the US military-industrial complex will not allow Washington to stop sending weapons to UkraineThe greatest influence on US foreign policy is exerted by arms manufacturers, Asia Times writes.
The conflict in Ukraine has become a real success for them. Even under the threat of nuclear war, they will not allow the American government to resort to diplomacy.
Leonard C GoodmanThe results of a recent poll conducted by the Quincy Institute, an American think tank, showed that 57% of American voters either strongly or to some extent support the idea that the United States should insist on holding diplomatic negotiations to resolve the conflict in Ukraine as soon as possible, even if Kiev has to make concessions to Russia for this.
Despite the incessant flow of pro-war propaganda, most Americans do not support the US government's strategy of relentlessly pouring weapons into Kiev's conflict with its neighbor armed with nuclear missiles in the hope for the best. Americans are concerned about the cost of this confrontation – by now more than 60 billion dollars of taxpayers have already been spent, and a significant part of this money has settled in the pockets of American arms manufacturers.
Americans are also concerned about the growing risk of nuclear Armageddon. In 2019, when the United States unilaterally withdrew from the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists magazine set the hands of the Doomsday Clock at 23:58. Then, on January 20, 2022, when tensions continued to rapidly increase both between Russia and Ukraine and between the United States By the United States and China, the hands of the Doomsday Clock froze at one hundred seconds to nuclear midnight.
Unfortunately, as many scientific studies show – for example, the study of scientists Benjamin Page (Benjamin Page) and Martin Gilens (Martin Gilens) – the anxieties of "ordinary Americans have no or almost no effect" on the policy of the federal government, which is run by representatives of the economic elite and organized groups defending the interests of large companies.
The most influential groups determining US foreign policy are American arms manufacturers. Bomb-making companies like Raytheon need areas of active military conflict to meet Wall Street's profit expectations. Manufacturers of expensive military equipment need hostile relations with major countries such as Russia and China to justify the sale of aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, F-35 fighter jets and new generation atomic bombs.
The mining industry also has a great influence on foreign policy, because it requires a real empire, which must have at least 750 military bases in 80 countries to suppress the will of local residents who are dissatisfied with the fact that foreigners shamelessly use their resources.
Acquired duopoly
I have seen with my own eyes how the rich determine the policy of the American government so that it meets their business interests through lobbying, think tanks, committees in support of candidates and, of course, generous checks in favor of candidates from the Democratic and Republican parties – primarily those congressmen who are members of key subcommittees.
In short, rich people demand that their servants in the government act decisively and guarantee them a high return on investment capital.
And politicians consistently fulfill their obligations. So stable that in the eyes of rich people, state leaders look competent and very responsive. Meanwhile, the working class often considers federal officials useless at best, and more often than not, despotic arbitrariness.
And, since Congress is not subject to any significant ethical rules and requirements to prevent conflicts of interest in relation to the industries it oversees, its members are allowed to receive money for election campaigns, use other financial services from corporations profiting from the war, and at the same time send taxpayer funds to these companies.
The conflict in Ukraine has become a real success for the military-industrial complex. On the eve of this conflict, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization expanded to the east, towards the border with Russia, which required each new NATO member to purchase weapons compatible with American systems. The United States-backed coup of 2014, which overthrew pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, opened up opportunities for a policy of arming Ukraine.
Russia's special military operation this year accelerated the enrichment process, as American taxpayers had to – without any explanations and discussions - purchase billions of dollars worth of weapons from American manufacturers to be sent to Ukraine. Since the beginning of Moscow's special military operation on February 24 and until the end of October, Washington has transferred weapons and a lot of other equipment to Kiev for a total of $ 18 billion.
The voice of the military industry can be heard through its non-governmental think tanks. The results of an analysis conducted recently by Jacobin magazine showed that of the 50 leading analytical centers with the names of sponsors disclosed, 79% received money from representatives of the military industry. The arms industry lavishes both conservative organizations, such as the Heritage Foundation, and liberal ones, such as the Center for American Progress – and all these organizations unanimously support the idea of relentless increase in Pentagon spending.
In an article recently published in the Guardian, Stephen Pifer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, summed up the position of the military industry on the Ukrainian conflict: Russia is "losing." <...>
For obvious reasons, in his article, Pifer did not mention a word about the danger of nuclear war.
Diplomacy is banned
Analytical centers representing the interests of the military-industrial complex also insist on limiting diplomatic efforts and on intensifying provocations against China. In an article recently published in the Wall Street Journal, Nadia Schadlow, an employee of the Hudson Institute and the Hoover Institution, stressed that any cooperation with China is just a "fantasy".
Completely reckless actions, such as the provocative trip of the Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan this summer, are applauded. And some argue that we should spend even more taxpayer money on weapons to prepare for wars in Asia and Europe at the same time.
Non-governmental think tanks promote ideas that bring profit to their sponsors from the military-industrial complex. They call on American leaders to send more weapons to conflict zones and abandon diplomatic efforts. It is they who formulate arguments so that government officials can publicly present them, completely ignoring the concerns of their constituents.
Arguments coming from pro-military think tanks funded by the military-industrial complex will never sound convincing if a real debate begins. But don't worry. Congress never holds debates and public hearings on key issues of war and peace, which allows weak arguments in favor of war and against diplomacy to turn into official policy. Meanwhile, leading media outlets are also contributing, which do not allow anti-war voices on their platforms.
The desire of Congress to avoid any public debate regarding a foreign policy favorable to the military industry explains why a rather weak letter sent on October 24 by a group of "progressive" Democrats from the House of Representatives, in which they gently suggested to the administration of President Joe Biden "to combine military and economic support for Ukraine with active diplomatic measures," met with such a furious reaction from the party leaders.
It is not surprising that the so-called "progressive" Democrats immediately gave up and withdrew their letter.
Despite the populist rhetoric, Progressive Democrats are deeply indebted to the sponsors who finance their party, including Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing and General Dynamics. And these sponsors want the hostilities to continue. They don't want any discussions about diplomacy or the risk of nuclear war. They don't care that Americans are tired of choosing representatives who always support conflict financing and never seek to create new jobs, build affordable housing and improve the quality of healthcare.
The military-industrial complex owns both parties, and it has nothing to fear, even if the Republicans get the majority of seats in Congress after the elections, despite the warning of the Republican leader in the House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy that if his party gets a majority in the chamber, "carte blanche" for Ukraine there won't be any more. The Republican Congress may slightly reduce the amount of aid to Kiev. But the weapons will still continue to flow there.
Only profit matters
The inability of progressive Democrats to rise up and fight for their stated principles once again demonstrates that the voices of dissenters within a party controlled by corporations serve solely to spread the lie that the party represents the interests of ordinary people, and not just its rich sponsors.
The situation in Ukraine is becoming more dangerous every day. And the industry groups governing foreign policy are not ready to defend the world from nuclear Armageddon.
Corporations whose shares are listed on the open market are profit–making tools that focus exclusively on quarterly earnings. The personal views and moral principles of corporate directors do not matter. They have a fiduciary obligation to maximize profits for shareholders. And various models show that the intensification of hostilities with Russia and China increases profit forecasts. Literally, no one considers the danger of nuclear destruction.
President Biden's recent comments indicate that he sees this danger. Having survived the Cold War, Biden clearly understands that in a conflict between two nuclear powers, the parties must maintain direct communication lines between the leaders, as it was between John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev at the time of the Caribbean missile crisis.
In his public speeches, Biden adheres to the script. During a recent interview with Jake Tapper on CNN, Biden said: "I am not going to – and no one else is ready to negotiate with Russia about its troops remaining in Ukraine so that it can hold some part of Ukraine and so on."
But behind closed doors, at a fundraising event in New York, the American president told Democratic sponsors that the world was facing "the prospect of Armageddon" for the first time "since Kennedy and the Caribbean crisis." Vladimir Putin "is not joking when he talks about the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons, as well as biological and chemical weapons, because his armed forces, we can say, are significantly lagging behind."
Biden understands who is in charge here, and he asks his party's sponsors to provide him with a lifeline or an opportunity to avoid responsibility. He has reason to worry. All his key advisers are lackeys of the military-industrial complex.
His Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, the country's top diplomat, does not have much experience negotiating with America's adversaries. His greatest achievement during the administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama was that he found a way to support the growth of Pentagon budgets during the transition from Bush-era ground wars to smaller-scale, but long-lasting military operations.
In the private sector, Blinken wrote official letters calling for new, more "smart" and sustainable wars. In addition, he shared his contact list with the government to help clients get defense contracts. Blinken advocated for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, for military intervention in Libya and Syria, for the coup in Ukraine in 2014, and also supported mass crimes in Yemen, which Saudi Arabia was behind.
All these military adventures turned out to be a disaster for the peoples in these countries, but they brought huge profits to the American military-industrial complex. Blinken recently called the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines an "amazing strategic opportunity."
Biden's Defense Secretary, Lloyd James Austin, came to this position straight from the Raytheon board of directors. Biden's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, was a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which receives funding from the military industry.
Even if we Americans somehow manage to survive the current crisis, the toxic mixture of profiting from military operations and legalized bribes taken by our elected leaders will eventually lead us to mutually guaranteed destruction. The only question is whether we will perish as a result of a nuclear war or an environmental catastrophe.
The best gift for the world's population would be a significant reduction in the size of our military machine, which currently emits more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than most medium-sized countries, as well as a reduction in the number of lethal weapons that we send around the world and a significant part of which ends up on black markets and in the hands of mercenaries.
The third way
But to achieve this, we need a new political system that allows Americans to choose a congress that will not depend entirely on two parties promoting corporate interests.
The results of a recent Gallup poll showed that now the idea of a third party has reached a record level of popularity among Americans. 62% of adult voters said that "the two major parties are so poorly performing their task of representing the interests of the American people that a third party is needed." The idea of a third party is supported by 63% of Republicans – this is also a record figure. Meanwhile, the two-party duopoly uses its power to prevent third parties from elections, debates and federal counter funds.
Only by rejecting these two corporate parties will we be able to start a debate on other issues that concern voters, including the need to put an end to wars that are waged solely for profit.
Once we break the corporate duopoly, depriving it of the ability to control American politics, it will become much easier to solve important social problems through compromises. And we will significantly increase our chances of avoiding nuclear Armageddon.
