September 25, 2006
"Over-grown military
establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and
are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty."
George
Washington (1732-1799), 1st US President
"[The] conjunction of an immense
military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American
experience. ...In the councils of government, we must guard against the
acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the
military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced
power exists and will persist."
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), 34th US
President, Farewell Address, Jan. 17, 1961
"It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our
country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially
induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of
fear."
General Douglas
MacArthur, Speech, May 15, 1951
In the 1920’s, President Calvin
Coolidge said, "the business of America is business." Nowadays, it can be said
that the Arms industry and permanent war have become a big
part of American business, as the offshoot of a well-entrenched military-industrial complex.
This is a development that previous American men of vision, men like President George Washington
and President Dwight Eisenhower
have warned
against as being intrinsically inimical to democracy and liberty. However, the
current Bush-Cheney administration
is not afraid of such a development; its principal members are part of it and
are instead very busy promoting it.
Wars, especially modern electronic wars, are very murderous,
but they are also synonymous with big cost-plus contracts, big profits and big
employment for those who produce the required military gear. Wars are the
paradise of profiteers.
—Wars are also a way for mediocre politicians to monopolize both the news
and the media in their partisan favor by whipping up patriotic fervor and by
pushing for narrow-minded nationalism. Indeed, to inflame patriotism and
nationalism is an old demagogic trick used to dominate a nation. When that
happens, there is a clear danger that democracy and freedom will be eroded, and
even disappear, if that development leads to an exacerbated concentration of
power and political corruption.
The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were a bonanza for
the American military-industrial complex. This was an event, a "New Pearl Harbor",
that some had
openly been hoping for. The reason? These attacks gave the perfect pretext to
keep military expenses, which had been expected to fall after the demise of the
old Soviet Empire, at a high level. Instead, they provided the
rationale for dramatically increasing them, by substituting a “War on
Terror” and a "War against Islamists" as a replacement for the
“War against Communism,” and the "Cold War against the Soviet
Union". In this new perspective, the gates of military spending could be
open and flowing again. The development of ever more sophisticated armaments
could go forward and thousands of corporations and hundreds of political
districts could continue to reap the benefits. The costs would be born by the taxpayers, by young
men and women who die in combat and by remote populations who happen to lie
under the rain of bombs about to fall upon them and their homes.
Indeed, in September 2000, when the Pentagon issued its
famous strategy document entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses",
the belief was expressed that the kind of military transformation the planners
were considering required "some catastrophic and catalyzing event
— like a new Pearl Harbor”, to make it possible to sell the plan to the
American public. They were either prescient or lucky, because one year later,
they had the "New Pearl Harbor" they had been hoping for.
The military-industrial complex needs wars, many and successive wars,
to prosper. Old military equipment has to be repaired and replaced each time
there is a hot war. But to justify the enormous costs of developing ever more
deadly weapons, there needs to be a constant climate of fear and vulnerability.
For example, there are many reports, originating from medical and international
observers, that the Israeli attacks against Lebanon and Gaza during the summer
of 2006, allowed for the use of 'new American-made weapons'.
Such weapons are reported to include depleted uranium (DU) bombs, 'direct
energy' weapons and new chemical and biological weapons. These weapons not only
make the act of homicide easier but they also contaminate the environment with
radioactive DU particles for decades to come.
But, to build a
compact strong enough to steer a
democratic country on the path of a permanent war economy takes an alliance of
interests between militarists, industrialists, politicians, sycophants and propagandists.
These are the five pillars of the military-industrial complex, as can be found
in the United States.
1. The U. S. military
establishment
In
1991, at the end of the Cold War, the U.S. defense budget
was $298.9 billion. In 2006, that budget had increased to $447.4 billion, and
this does not include the $100 billion-plus spent in the Iraq and Afghanistan
wars. It is estimated that American military expenditures represent, at a very
minimum, close to half of total world military outlays
(48 per cent of the world total in 2005, according to official figures), while the
U.S. accounts for less than 5 per cent of world population and about 25 per
cent of world total output. —As a percentage, the U.S. military expenses
gobble up a minimum of 21 per cent of the total American federal budget (2006=$
2,144.3 billion). Such a military budget is larger than the gross domestic product (GDP) of some countries, such as
Belgium or Sweden. —It is sort of a government within a government.
In 2006, the U.S. Department of
Defense employed 2,143,000 people, while it estimates that private defense
contractors employ 3,600,000 workers, for a grand total of 5,743,000
defense-related American jobs, or 3.8% of the total labor force. In addition,
there are close to 25 million veterans in the United States. Therefore, it is
safe to say that more than 30 million Americans receive checks which originate
directly or indirectly from the U. S. military budget. Assuming conservatively
only two voting-age people per household, this translates into a block of some
60 million American voters who have a financial stake in the American military
establishment. Thus the clear danger of a militarized society perpetuating
itself politically.
2. The private defense
contractors
The five largest American Defense
contractors are Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and General Dynamics. They are followed by Honeywell,
Halliburton, BAE Systems and thousands of smaller defense companies and
subcontractors. Some, like Lockheed Martin in Bethesda (Maryland) and Raytheon
in Waltham (Massachusetts) draw close to 100 per cent of their business from
defense contracts. Some others, like Honeywell in Morristown (New Jersey), have
important consumer goods divisions. All, however, stand to profit when
expenditures on weapons procurements increase. In fact, U.S. defense
contractors have been enjoying big Pentagon budgets since March 2003, i.e.
since the onset of the Iraq war. —As a result, they have posted sizable
increases in total shareholder returns, ranging from 68 % (Northrop Grumman) to
164 % (General Dynamics), from March '03 to September '06.
It also has to be pointed out
that private defense contractors play another social role: they are big
employers of former generals and former admirals from the U.S. military
establishment.
3. The political establishment
In the U.S., president George W. Bush, a former oil-man, and Vice
President Dick Cheney, as former chairman and C.E.O of the large oil service
company Halliburton in Houston (Texas), epitomize the image of politicians
devoted to the growth and development of the military-industrial complex. Their
administration has expanded the military establishment and they have adopted a
militarist foreign policy on a scale not seen since the end of the Cold War and even since the end of World War II.
Indeed, under the Bush-Cheney administration, the arms industry has become very
profitable. Multi billion-dollar contracts to sell planes and tanks to various
countries in an increasingly lawless world are going full swing. Close to
two-thirds of all arms exports in the world originate from North America.
Congress, for its part, is indebted to defense corporations
that operate military plants in each congressman's district or senator's state,
besides owing some gratitude to the lobbies
that provide funds and media support in election times.
4. The "think tanks"
establishment
The brain-trust and the sycophants behind the war-oriented
economy form an interlocking network of Washington-based so-called 'think tanks' that are financed by
the rich tax-exempt foundations which have billions of dollars of assets, such
as, for example, the Bradley Foundation,
the John M. Olin Foundation, the Scaife
Foundation or the Coors Foundation, etc. —Among the most influential and
representative think tanks, whose mission is to orient American foreign policy,
one finds the American Enterprise Institute
(AEI), the Heritage Foundation, the Middle East Media Research Institute, the neoconservative
Washington Institute for Near
Eastern Policy, the Center for Security Policy,
the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, the
Project for the New American
Century (PNAC) and the Hudson Institute. —Such think
tanks serve a double purpose: they provide government officials with policy
papers on various topics, usually on the very conservative side; and, they
serve as incubators for government departments, supplying them with already
trained personnel and providing employment for public officials who are out of
office.
The same revolving door that exists between the military
establishment and defense contractors is also observed to exist between the
Washington-based think tanks and U.S. government departments.
5. The "propaganda"
establishment
The pro-war economy propagandists are to be found in the
fundamentally right-wing American media industry. This is because the selling
of war-oriented policies requires the expertise that only a well-oiled
propaganda machine can provide.
The most potent propaganda tool is television. And there, Rupert Murdock's Fox News Network
is unbeatable. There is no American media outlet more openly devoted to the
neocon ideology and more committed to supporting new American wars than Fox
News. CNN or MSNBC may sometimes try to emulate it, but their professionalism
prevents them from even coming close to Fox News in being biased toward war and
in unabashedly promoting U.S. global domination. Fox's propaganda efforts are closely
coordinated with other Murdoch-owned print media, such as the Weekly Standard
and the New York Post. The Washington Times, which is controlled by the Rev.
Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, the neoconservative New York Sun, and
other neocon publications such as the National Review, the New Republic, The
American Spectator, the Wall Street Journal, complete the main pro-war
propaganda infrastructure.
In conclusion, it is the conjunction of these five pro-war
machines, i.e. the bloated military establishment, the large American arms
industry, the Neocon pro-war administration with Congress being strongly under
the influence of militarist lobbies, the pro-war think tanks network and the
pro-war media propagandists that constitutes the framework of the
military-industrial complex, of which President Dwight Eisenhower wisely feared
the corrosive influence on American society, forty-five years ago, in 1961.
___________________________________________________
Rodrigue Tremblay is professor
emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com.
He is the
author of the book 'The
New American Empire'.
Visit his
blog site at www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.
Author's
Website:www.thenewamericanempire.com/
_______________________________________________________________________
Posted,
September 25, 2006, at 5:30 am
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