Auteur: EN-AG

05-10-19 09:24:00,

Photograph Source: Pfc. Cameron Boyd/Released – CC0

Our elected representatives do not have to be bribed with campaign contributions from weapons makers to support the Department of Defense budget. They may, shockingly, be representing our nation. Australian political scientist David T. Smith states: “The National Security State maintains democratic legitimacy because of the way it disperses public and private benefits while shielding ordinary Americans from the true costs of high-tech warfare.”

Some support for our military’s activities and its budget can be attributed to propaganda, or veteran nostalgia, or the glorification of violence in our history books, schools, and patriotic parades. In addition, a multitude of interests sustains the military and its budget, and encourages silence about its activities.

The “free enterprise” economy, although always government supported, has been increasingly weakened by foreign competition, outsourcing, automation, consumer satiation, rustbelting, poverty, and demographic changes. A “mixed economy” then fills the breach. Public-private entities in the form of local economic development councils have been created because the “free enterprise dynamic system” can do “everything better,” (so its advocates claim), except keep the economy going. Capitalism must be saved by massive national, state, and local government investment and intervention in education, research, health care, highways and other infrastructure, transportation, agriculture, urban planning, environmental remediation, social services, recreation, business incubators, prisons, and much else.

“Military Keynesianism” is a major part of our “Blood Red” New Deal; some of its practices recall the Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s. (Not coincidently, the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Bonneville Power project served munitions production, and later, at Oak Ridge and Hanford, supported the enormous energy that nuclear fuel required.)

Unfortunately, the mission of the US military, according to its Defense Strategy Review is to “build a more lethal force” and “With our allies and partners, we will challenge competitors by maneuvering them into unfavorable positions, frustrating their efforts, precluding their options while expanding our own, and forcing them to confront conflict under adverse conditions.”

Our military is not particularly concerned with the welfare of persons or the environment, nationally or internationally. Its strategy does not propose using cooperation, diplomacy, or international law to reduce the threat to human civilization.

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