Thanks!
Dr Ismail LagardienVisiting ProfessorWits University School of Governance
Nihil humani a me alienum puto
On Sunday, 6 September 2020, 14:02:53 GMT+2, Louis Proyect <[email protected]>
wrote:
On 9/6/20 6:23 AM, Ismail Lagardien via groups.io wrote:
Hi All.
I hope everyone is safe and healthy... I want to tabulate the value of the US
military industry. I will search online, but if anyone has a source or knows of
a paper that has pulled together the following, I shall be grateful for a
share.
1. Cost of operating >700 military bases 2. Value of Military Industry (from
planes to ammunition) 3. Number of people employed in military industry 4.
Number of people in Military
Military Spending
Posted to www.marxmail.org on February 23, 2004
(This was originally a submission to Revolution magazine in New Zealand)
At the end of the Vietnam war, U.S. citizens heard about a "peace dividend" for
the first time. Although military expenditures were reduced by approximately 25
percent between 1973 and the end of the decade, there were no benefits for poor
or working people. This period was marked by increasing attacks from Nixon's
successor Gerald Ford and then by Jimmy Carter, a Democratic president whose
most famous quote is "We have learned that more is not necessarily better, that
even our great nation has its recognized limits and that we can neither answer
all questions nor solve all problems."
Soon after the election of Ronald Reagan, military spending rose dramatically.
At the end of his first term, it was exceeding the amount spent during the
height of the Vietnam war. By all accounts, pressure from the USA on the Soviet
Union to react to initiatives such as the Strategic Defensive Initiative (Star
Wars) was one of the major factors leading to the collapse of state socialism.
Reagan's Vice President said "We were right to increase our defense budget. Had
we acted differently, the liberalization that we are seeking today throughout
the Soviet bloc would most likely not be taking place." NY Times columnist
agreed that Reagan's buildup "seemed to impress the Soviets as a challenge that
they might not be able to meet."
After the rise of Gorbachev and the collapse of the Berlin Wall, hopes rose
again about the possibility of a peace dividend. In fact, Defense Secretary
Dick Cheney did order the military to cut $180 bn from the budget for 1992-94,
about a 6 percent reduction, but his boss George Bush decided that the savings
were to be used almost exclusively to reduce the Federal budget deficit .
Under Clinton, military spending decreased somewhat from the previous
administration but only modestly. But by the time he left office, it was up to
the same levels as under Bush the elder, namely just under $300 bn per year.
Under Bush Jr. spending has increased sharply. In 2002 it was up to $360 bn,
just slightly below Reagan era figures. For 2004, the amount requested from
Congress is $400 bn--this does not include a supplemental request of $35 bn for
the occupation of Iraq. This exceeds Reagan's largest, at a time when Soviet
Union was still supposedly a threat to the USA. Now that it no longer exists,
it is all the more irrational to be wasting billions with a rising unemployment
rate and declining social indicators.
There still are a couple of Communist bogeyman left but the more reputedly
dangerous of the two--North Korea--spends about 1/300 of the USA on its
military and Cuba less than half of that. Notwithstanding this, they are
represented along with Iraq as threats to the security of the USA. (Iraq's
expenditures were about the same as North Korea's.)
Right now the USA accounts for more than 43 percent of military expenditures
worldwide. It nearly doubles the amount spent by Japan ($41 bn), Great Britain
($35 bn), Russia ($29 bn), Germany ($23 bn) and China ($14.5 bn) combined.
Defense contractors have been ecstatic. Ronald Sugar, the chief executive of
Los Angeles-based defense company Northrup Grumman, recently said he saw "very
significant growth in sales and earnings" as a result of the hikes in budgets.
It should come as no surprise that Donald Rumsfeld was an ex-director of a
General Dynamics subsidiary and that Paul Wolfowitz, his deputy defense
secretary, was as a consultant to Northrop.
Although it is beyond the scope of this article to fully analyze what drives
this profligacy, we can certainly say that it reflects the need of a declining
empire to maintain its control over vast areas of the world. In a December 6,
2003 conference on Imperialism held at Columbia University, both Peter Gowan
and David Harvey explained US military spending as compensating for a loss of
economic power. Hegemony, to paraphrase Chairman Mao, would seem to grow out of
the barrel of a gun.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group.
View/Reply Online (#1215): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/1215
Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/76664217/21656
-=-=-
POSTING RULES & NOTES<br />#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when
replying to a message.<br />#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly &
permanently archived.<br />#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a
concern.
-=-=-
Group Owner: [email protected]
Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy
[[email protected]]
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
