Budgeting the Military Industrial Complex and Other Juxtapositionally Humorous Indications of Our Anti-Strategic Stupidity

© 2014 Peter Free

 

24 November 2014

 

The more it stays the same

 

A few days ago, General Martin Dempsey (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) told the Defense One Summit that the military needs more money:

 

The top US military official on Wednesday made the case for growing the base defense budget significantly over the $535 billion spending cap imposed by Congress for fiscal 2015.

 

[T]he final top line number “is still moving,” said Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey.

 

“[W]e need additional top line [funds] for the emerging new requirements” faced by the US military, he said.

 

There has been some talk that the Pentagon has suggested budgets as high as $60 billion over the $535 billion spending cap.

 

When Pentagon leadership began drawing up the budget to fund 2016 earlier this year, Russia had not yet annexed Crimea and invaded Ukraine, the Pentagon was not deploying 3,000 troops back to Iraq and thousands more to West Africa to help fight the Ebola outbreak, and leadership had not yet identified capability gaps in the nation’s space and nuclear profiles, Dempsey told an audience at the Defense One summit in Washington.

 

Dempsey called the redeployment of US troops back to Iraq part of “probably a three- or four-year campaign” while insisting that unlike his three previous deployments to Iraq in 1991 and in the early 2000s, this time the United States would remain in an advisory role — at least for the time being.

 

© 2014 Paul McLeary, Dempsey Lays Groundwork for Larger 2016 Defense Budget, Defense News (18 November 2014) (extracts, underline added)

 

 

In coincidental juxtaposition, last night — 60 Minutes drew the nation’s attention to the need to rebuild and repair much of the United States’ transportation infrastructure

 

With the accompanying explanation that no one knows where to get the billions (and probably trillions) of dollars necessary to do the job:

 

60 Minutes, Falling apart: America's neglected infrastructure, CBS News (23 November 2014)

 

Stick these two blurbs of news together — and fire up your brain

 

On the one hand, the external threats that General Dempsey claims to be addressing are all of America’s own making. And none existentially threaten us.

 

For example, the United States, NATO and the Europe Union created the current problem with Russia in Ukraine by spending decades encroaching on Russia’s historically well-established sphere of influence. Russia is merely reacting the way we would, if the Federation traipsed into the Western Hemisphere and tried to recruit Mexico and Canada into a Russia-centered defense alliance.

 

We also self-created the nightmarish level of current instability in the Middle East by, among many other things:

 

eliminating Iraq’s stabilizing partial dominance in the region

 

and

 

simultaneously bringing a provocatively Crusades-like Christian occupation to both Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

Not content with these instances of stirring the pot, we have (we can infer from General Dempsey's words) “overlooked” the fact that unnecessarily provoking Russia and China (and maybe Iran) might have implications for our nuclear program and space capabilities, as well.

 

So, here we are, beating the stuffings out of “foreign” peoples, expecting them to take it, and then using their naturally occurring resistance as an excuse to batter them further.

 

In response to this phenomenon, General Dempsey asks for more money. The total “is still moving.” Evidently because we have fertile imaginations and enemies might pop up anywhere and for no reason.

 

What a shocker.

 

On the other hand, the physical infrastructure that actually does keep America’s economy moving is falling apart, constituting a real (not pretend) existential threat. These unhappy circumstances are also of our own doing — the result of our long-standing “no new taxes” delusion. The only thing that gets financed in the United States for invisibly nothing is war.

 

Somehow, it is more important to us to invent adversaries abroad, pummel them until they really do become enemies, and spend — by some reasonable estimates of what the Pentagon tries to hide — up to 44 percent of the federal budget to keep us all safe.

 

Note

 

The 44 percent figure comes from a reasonably persuasive analysis contained in Ismael Hossein-Zadeh, The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism, Palgrave MacMillan, 2006 (at page 206).

 

The moral? — Presidents Washington and Eisenhower were right

 

Sliding into this topic, let’s take General Dempsey’s prediction of 3 to 4 more years of war in Iraq:

 

No one can foretell the duration and outcome of asymmetric war. Or, for that matter, any other war of significance.

 

The competent general, of course, is not nuts. He is merely in tune with American imperialism’s “Washington Rules” for waging what now amounts to perpetual war.

 

 

Note

 

“Washington Rules” refers to Andrew J. Bacevich, Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War, Metropolitan Books, 2010.

For an overview and book review, see: Gary J. Bass, Endless War, New York Times (03 September 2010)

 

 

Meanwhile, America’s critically important infrastructure crumbles, due to lack of funds.

 

Today’s skewed priorities are why President Dwight Eisenhower was correct in warning us against allowing the Military Industrial Complex to take over the nation’s direction.

 

Often forgotten is President and “General of the Armies” George Washington’s essentially identical 1796 caution:

 

We should avoid those overgrown military establishments, which under any form of government are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to Republican Liberty.

 

Humor comes from appreciating the depth and breadth of our stupidity in ignoring both figures. Pun intended.

 

The alleged national defense process has gone off the rails, combining arms manufacturers’ greed and Congressional pork barreling, with an entrenched establishment of usually camouflaged people, who put profit, well-meaning paranoia, and sometimes self-advancement before intellectually defensible ethics and historically valid concepts of American liberty and security.

 

General Dempsey is unfortunately caught at the focal point for these immense pressures. As with the Commander in Chief, I pray him well. Even with their combined abilities, some days must be nearly impossible.