The Huffington Post - Jan 9, 2006
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/the-peace-economy_b_13509.html
The Peace Economy
by Deepak Chopra
America has the largest war economy in the history of the world. After being
warned by the outgoing Pres. Eisenhower about the dangers of allowing the
military to permanently join forces with corporations, we went ahead and
plunged into just that scenario. As a result, we have remained on a war
footing since the day after Pearl Harbor, some 64 years ago.
Two generations of Americans have forgotten that it's normal to be at peace
and abnormal to keep a huge standing army at the ready. The main reason for
this is economic. War has always been good business. So there's zero chance
of dismantling the military-industrial complex until peace is good business,
too. Fortunately, it already is. The U.S. exports entertainment to the
world, we dominate in software and information technologies, we retain an
edge in construction, scientific R and D, higher education, medicine,
banking, communications, and advertising. But for how long?
These are all "soft" alternatives to our other great exports, aerospace
technologies, weapons, foreign military bases, and war itself. Since 1960
the U.S. has adapted to losing its smokestack industries (primarily steel),
its energy base (oil), and now its large-scale manufacturing (automobiles).
Change is hard, but if we can adapt to those things, we can adapt to
becoming a global "soft" economy.
Peace is soft. It doesn't hide in fear behind borders. It accepts influences
from outside. It makes friends of foreigners. GM knows that it can't survive
without making cars in China, so that step has been taken. The oil industry
realized that it had to concede the lion's share of energy revenues to
Middle Eastern regimes (unthinkable at the end of World War II), so that has
happened as well.
The economics of peace consists in giving the military-industrial complex a
new role. Step by step the military boondoggle must be diverted into such
peaceful uses as rebuilding the nation's infrastructure, funding a future
for the poor, providing meaningful jobs for the elderly after they retire,
and feeding the world. The Soviet Union had such a devastated infrastructure
that it was like a Third World country with a space program. We are well on
the way to becoming a military empire with impoverished masses at home.
The right-wing cant about free markets is a sham. Free-market forces didn't
operate in the build-up of the military-industrial complex. It's completely
subsidized and planned by the government. So don't buy into the argument
that the free market won't support peace. We could pay arms makers to send
every worker to Africa to fight AIDS. Such a project would be just as
subsidized as atom bombs but far more humane. We could feed the Third World
and hire every person back to make goods for us. We could explore for oil in
every corner of the globe with a tenth of our current expenditures on
advanced Stealth fighters, missiles, and future technologies of mechanized
death.
We don't lack imagination. Peaceful projects seem unworkable because we are
addicted to a way of life funded by the military and their corporate
partners. But the economics of peace works (look at the totally unmilitary
economies of Japan and Scandinavia, for example) if only we have the will to
try.
[Deepak Chopra came to the U.S. in 1970 from his native India to practice
medicine, a career that evolved into the field of mind-body medicine. His
breakthrough book, "Quantum Healing," brought him public recognition in
1989. Since then he has written more than 42 books and travels worldwide as
a spiritual speaker who fuses Western science with Eastern wisdom.]
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