Commentary on the free market and the
American Dream, following the theme that Thomas Friedman described in The Lexus and the Olive Tree, posted
recently. To change the premise
of these arguments would be difficult, but not impossible: we do not have to
subscribe to perpetual militarism and a government dominated by the military
industrial complex.
Thomas
Friedman in "The Lexus and the Olive Tree": "The hidden hand of the market
will never work without a hidden fist. �McDonald's cannot flourish without
McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the U.S. Air Force F-15. And the hidden
fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish
is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps."
The Security We Seek: The Connection
Between Materialism and Militarism
By Bryan Massingale, Fellowship of
Reconciliation, May/June 2005
What is our national security agenda? The
often-repeated goal of national security is to protect �American interests�
and defend �our way of life��a way of life that our enemies seek to destroy.
What is our way of life that we seek to promote abroad and defend from hostile
attack? It is usually described in a couple of typical phrases, for example,
�our democratic way of life and our economic prosperity,�(1) or �freedom,
democracy, and free enterprise.�(2) In yet another place, the Administration
states, �We will seek to bring the hope of democracy, development, free
markets and free trade to every corner of the world.�(3)
Thus American
interests are described as a triad of democracy, prosperity, and free markets.
Of these, it is clear that the fundamental American interest crucial to �our
way of life� is economic prosperity: free trade, free markets, free enterprise
are all necessary to guarantee it. The US national security policy statement
makes this crystal clear:
Free markets and free trade are key
priorities of our national security strategy.(4 )
The United States
goes so far as to elevate free trade into a central and defining �moral
principle�:
The concept of �free trade� arose as a
moral principle even before it became a pillar of economics. If you can make
something that others value, you should be able to sell it to them. If others
make something that you value, you should be able to buy it. This is real
freedom, [author�s italics] the freedom for a person�or a nation�to make a
living. (5)
Thus our core American value, the freedom
we seek to defend, is the freedom to buy and sell, the freedom to acquire and
consume, the freedom�dare I say it�to shop.
Now we can see what is
central to our �security� concerns. For a primary objective of our military
strategy is to protect �our way of life��that is, first and foremost, our
economic prosperity. And America�s economic well-being is dependent upon our
military dominance:
Our forces will be strong enough to
dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of
surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United
States.(6)
The preservation of our military dominance
is so central to our security and the protection of our �interests� (defined
principally in terms of economics and trade) that we declare that we will act
preemptively and unilaterally, with crushing, overwhelming power, to maintain
it.(7)
Let us sum up our journey thus far. Underlying the American
pursuit and understanding of �security� is a deep sense of fear and
vulnerability felt in the aftermath of the homeland attacks of
9/11. Our policy documents
constantly play upon and remind us of the threats we face and our
vulnerability to cold-blooded evil. Our
way of life, a life of undisputed military dominance and unfettered economic
prosperity, is under attack from nefarious enemies, both known and unknown,
seen and unseen. Our fear and vulnerability demand that we maintain and
bolster our military preeminence, in order to insure our continued economic
prosperity and consumer lifestyle. Indeed, our national security
strategy makes clear the connection between military might and economic
consumption in ways that we seldom articulate. American national security
policy is a concrete example of what some have called a worldview of military
consumerism.
Thus the
underside of consumerism is
the belief that having a disproportion of goods is
appropriate, and that using force or
violence to get or keep these goods is both necessary and legitimate. This
attitude is concretely illustrated in the statement of an American woman who
had just purchased a low mileage SUV during the Afghan conflict: She believes
that Americans have a right to do what we want and to buy what we want. She
asked, �Isn�t that why we are fighting?�
A consumer society�the American way of life�depends upon
violence, or the threat of violence, to maintain itself.
Rev. Bryan Massingale analyzed the two key
security documents of the current US Administration, �The National Strategy
for Homeland Security� and �The National Security Strategy of the USA,� in a
2003 paper on biblical views of security. The full text is available from the
Institute for Peace and Justice via e-mail ([EMAIL PROTECTED]); we thank IPJ for this
summary version. Both national security papers are accessible in full at the
official White House website, www.whitehouse.gov.
Notes
1. The National Strategy for
Homeland Security, 7
2. The National Security Strategy of the USA,
Introductory Presidential Letter.
3. op. cit.
4. Ibid., 23
5. Ibid.,
18
6. Ibid., 30
7. Ibid, 6, 15
http://www.forusa.org/fellowship/may-june_05/massingale.html
