[PEN-L:8562] Foreign Policy In Focus

[Interhemispheric Resource Center]

New at Foreign Policy in Focus

Military Industrial Complex Revisited: How Weapons Makers 
are Shaping U.S. Foreign and Military Policies
By William D. Hartung

As a result of a rash of military-industry mergers encouraged and 
subsidized by the Clinton administration, the "Big Three" weapons 
makers, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon, now receive over 
$30 billion per year in Pentagon contracts.  The Clinton administration's 
five-year budget plan for the Pentagon calls for nearly a 50% increase in 
weapons procurement, from $44 billion per year now to over $63 billion 
per year by 2003.  On issue after issue--from expanding NATO, to deploying 
the Star Wars missile defense system, to rolling back restrictions on arms 
sales to repressive regimes--the arms industry has launched a concerted 
lobbying campaign aimed at increasing military spending and arms exports. 
These initiatives are driven by profit and pork barrel politics, not by an
objective 
assessment of how best to defend the United States in the post-cold war
period.

www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/papers/micr/index