After the end of the Second World War, which was formidably won by the Allied powers led by the USA, a new world order was created. This led to the rise of the superpowers USSR and the USA. As the world entered the cold war era, an international arms race picked up at a rocketing pace, where the superpowers of the world developed and acquired the latest weapons, with cutting edge technology. The USA being a hegemonic power in the western democratic world became a leader in military R&D and technology. With this, the national security strategy of the Americans gained new and ambitious dimensions. In 1947 President Henry Truman came up with foreign policy and national security objectives and articulated them extensively in the US congress. It later came to be known as Truman’s doctrine. The key elements of the doctrine were * Active opposition to the Soviet Union worldwide. *The USA had a much bigger and stronger role than Franklin D Roosevelt had ever imagined. * Permanent global US military and political activity. Even though the basis of this doctrine was augmented for the cold war era, the third element of global military and political involvement is actively perused by the USA even today. In 1948 Truman’s doctrine was followed by Marshall Plan. * George G. Marshall proposed a massive US Aid plan to help Europe in the war recovery. * Marshall Plan swung into action and pumped $12 Billion into Europe. * This was a major part of US efforts to contain the communist expansion. * Marshall plan started Western Europe on to the road of economic integration. Therefore, we can easily say the USA became the de facto guardian of Europe through its Marshall Plan, especially Western Europe. As an expansion of its footprint in Europe, the USA through its NATO alliances with Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and some other Eastern European countries which were former Soviet Republics, has taken up its eastward march which has irked Russia in several ways.
But USA’s
National security revolves around several other key elements which are more or
less globalist in nature;
*The self-appointed task of protecting freedoms and democratic systems across the world.
* Protection of European Interests and safeguarding the ethos of Western
Civilization. * Pursuing economic hegemony and sanctions as a policy measure. *
Protection of regional spillovers and diffusion of regional conflicts along
with sharing of security responsibilities with regional powers, to reduce the
direct US military manpower burden with enhancing the export of US defence
technology and weapons. * Re-invigorating the energy industry and modernizing
the nuclear triad in pursuit of nuclear deterrence. * Europeanization and
westernization of the former Soviet Republics. * Humanitarian intervention across
the world when suited for its own national interests. By engaging in international
conflicts and wars, the US has become the world’s policeman and due to its sheer
economic and military might several countries are compelled to co-operate or
stay neutral when the US wants to cohesively peruse its national interests. Its
interventions in the Korean War (1950-53), Vietnam War (1965-73) Chile (1975),
Panama (1989), Gulf war (1990-91), Iraq (2003) Afghanistan (2001-2021)
demonstrates the fact that the USA is constantly mired in wars and conflicts across
the world. The dark secret behind its active global lethal military activity is
its mammoth war machine and the deep web of its military-industrial complex.
Analyzing
America’s Military-Industrial Complex.
The Military-Industrial
Complex (MIC) is a perceived informal alliance between a portion of the nation’s
scientific and technological community, its defence establishment and certain
sectors of the country’s military base. In other words, MIC is the relationship
between military leaders, government legislators, bureaucrats and private contractors,
all of whom have a stake in the national defence.
During the early
years of the Independent USA, and the early governments of the 18th and 19th
centuries, it dint even have a standing army. In fact, several founding fathers
and the early presidents of America considered standing armies as a threat. The
American declaration of independence stated the reason for separating from
England was the presence of a standing army. It shows that they were so averse
and cautious of having a military force in peace times. The faint efforts
towards developing a MIC was conceptualized in 1983. The Abraham Lincoln administration
passed a bill in the US Congress that would put a new scientific community at
the service of the Federal Government to Investigate, experiment and report on
any subject when requested by a federal department, which was enacted and established
as the National Academy of Sciences. But it’s important to note that any
institution, organization or a consortium of Scientists and engineers who were
requested to work for the Federal Government on defence/military purposes
during the wartime, were discontinued during the peacetime and they continued
their scientific and research activities in the civilian domains. This system
continued till the second world war period.
In 1941 during
the Franklin D Roosevelt administration a temporary wartime agency , the Office
of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) was established. OSRD mobilized the
country’s academic, technological and industrial resources in the support of
the war effort, and in doing do, profoundly transformed the linkages between
the science and engineering, industry and the government. Although the OSRD was disbanded on December 31,
1947 and its remaining functions were transferred to the National Military
Establishment, the organization had proved to have made a deep impact on structuralizing
the basis of MIC in several ways. This led to the establishment of permanent ties
between the military and scientific research which became permanently entwined,
which continues in a crony capitalist network and format till date.
In 1961 President
Dwight D. Eisenhower made a critical statement during his farewell speech, he said
“the total influence (referring to MIC), economic, political, even spiritual is
felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government. We
have been compelled to create a permanent armaments Industry of vast proportions.
In the councils of the government, we must guard against the acquisition of
unwarranted influence, weather sought or unsought by the military industrial
complex.” He goes on to say, “the potential rise for the disastrous rise of misplaced
powers exists, and will persist, we must never endanger our liberties or
democratic processes”. Almost everything that Eisenhower predicted and feared has
come true in the contemporary times of American experience. In fact the defence
Industry has grown bigger and mightier than Eisenhower ever imagined it to be.
The important
components of the Military Industrial Complex are:
·
Arms Manufacturers and defence
corporations
·
Congressional members
·
Defence Bureaucracy
·
Pentagon Establishment and the power
elites
Post
the cold war, once the soviet threat was over, the expectation was to retreat
back to the normalcy and take on the task of de-hyphenation of global military
activity. But the post cold war activity has shown that Americans at the behest
of the MIC continued to stay whether or not they had a major enemy to warrant. The
military establishment had become concrete and permanent by late 1990’s. High
ranking military leaders often look forward to high paying jobs with defence
contractors after their public careers are over. This is the reason why the US
military budget always goes up. In 2021 the defence Budget of the US has gone up
to $778 Billion, which means the United States spends more on defence than the
next 11 countries combined amongst the highest defence spenders of the world. Military
money funds an immense ecosystem of which is knowingly or unknowingly dedicated
to the continuation of the same system. The
system is so crony that, a small number of companies who have a close relationship
with government officials and possess specialized knowledge of the process tend
to win most of the defence contracts and these contracts are well known to be
highly lucrative in nature. The defence contractors that provide the government
with military equipment and services naturally would want to leech up as much
money as possible from this mammoth defence budget. They spend significant
amount of money to gain access to politicians and bureaucrats in ordet to
influence their decisions. The strong ties defence contractors develop with
politicians and bureaucrats lead to what is known as the revolving door, where
people hop from jobs in the private firms to jobs in the government and vice
versa. This dynamic only tightens the relationship that private firms have with
the government and allows them to take advantage of these connections, leading
to two important implications.
1)
Crucial decisions about the war are
not made by made by dispassionate politicians comparing costs and benefits of
the military action: Both Government and private businesses are active
participants in the defence sector and each attempt to influence and shape the
behaviours of the other. Lets say when you are manufacturing and profiting from
the military equipment you stand to benefit greatly from an interventionist
foreign policy. If you persuade policy makers, many of whom are your friend and
former colleagues to pursue military action, its more business for you. The travesty
of this can result in wars with military personnel shipped to distant territories
to fight and die without making the nation any safer.
2)
The government’s defence budget is
fought over by many firms looking to secure military contracts: lets imagine
that I’m a manufacturer of tanks, its in my best interest to try and get the
government to spend as much of its defence dollars as possible on tanks, even
if this is obviously a poor defence strategy. Private defence firms seek to
grab as much defence budget as possible, and as quickly as possible with little
or no regard for broader external costs of their behaviour. Yet their lobbying
efforts still shape the decisions of the government. The amount spent by
defence companies is quite staggering. In 2020 leading the lobby circuit was
Lockheed Martin which spent over $12.8 million, followed by Boeing $12.6
million, Northcorp Grumman $ 11.7 million, General Dynamics $ 10.7 Million,
Raytheon Technologies $7.5 million and the list goes on. Probably this is the
reason why the US air force is forced to buy F35 fighter jets manufactured by
Lockheed Martin even though there are several technical issues and cost
concerns that are repeatedly raised by the US air force. This means that rather
than only considering the public interests, the Military decisions are shaped
by special interests in the private sector, which can have disastrous
consequences.
No wonder why people keep asking the question as to why the
Americans have more than 800 military bases across the world that include
military compounds, airstrips, drone bases, intelligence resource units etc. It’s
quite shocking to learn the fact that US is estimated to have spent $4.79
trillion in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan wars. It not surprising that the USA
stands as the world’s largest defence exporter with $138.2 Billion exports in
the fiscal year 2021.
One needs to understand that the political arrangement of the MIC,
is very different from the way the competitive markets work, as it has
important consequences on the country’s national security and foreign policy decision
making. In the competitive markets, the profit and loss feedback provide
continual feedback as to whether companies are using their resources effectively
or not and firms face real competition. The result is that resources tend to be
used where they create market value. But for the military contractors, profit
and losses are determined not by the market, but by a firm’s ability to
navigate in political circles with the power elite. Decisions about where the
resources will go, are made by bureaucrats and not through market competitiveness.
This means that there is no way to ensure that resources used in the defence
industry are being used where they are valued the most. There is little accountability
for wasteful spending.
Since 1997 the government accountability office has been legally
required to audit the financial statements of the federal agencies. Despite this
requirement, it has been unable to audit the Department of defence(DoD),
because the DoD has been unable to provide accurate and credible financial
documents. This fundamental lack of basic accounting processes and controls means that the Pentagon is unable to keep track of its financial resources and expenditure
in any meaningful way. The sheer size and complexity of the MIC coupled with
its absurdly lofty foreign policy goals through oversight and accountability
are virtually impossible.
The only real solution would be to drastically reduce the size and
scope of the military and related government agencies, which remove many of the
incentives for the special interests to influence the US foreign policy and
defence spending.
An entire generation of Americans who have grown up and reached
the adulthood during the time of the post 9/11 wars, are committed to
principles of tolerance and trade with mutual and peaceful cultural exchange. They
are deeply sceptical of the military as a preferred instrument of American
foreign policy. But still the Idea that US military leadership provides an
indespensible stability of the globe is now a fixture of their global strategy
and foreign policy. This leaves us with a very pertinent question, ‘do Americans
focus on its national security or their Congressional job security’?
References
1) Doyle,
Richard B. “The U.S. National Security Strategy: Policy, Process, Problems.” Public
Administration Review, vol. 67, no. 4, [American Society for Public
Administration,
Wiley], 2007, pp. 624–29, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4624613.
2) Dunlap,
Charles J. “The Military-Industrial Complex.” Daedalus, vol. 140, no. 3,
The MIT Press, 2011, pp. 135–47, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23047354.
3) Baack,
Ben, and Edward Ray. “The Political Economy of the Origins of the
Military-Industrial Complex in the United States.” The Journal of Economic
History, vol. 45, no. 2, Cambridge University Press, 1985, pp. 369–75,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2121706.
4)
Bruce G. Brunton. “Institutional Origins of
the Military-Industrial Complex.” Journal of Economic Issues, vol. 22,
no. 2, Association for Evolutionary Economics, 1988, pp. 599–606, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4226018.
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