It gets close to a time-worn cliche to say that the great American Republic is governed largely, if not exclusively, for the interests of the military/industrial complex. Cliched or not, the statement is undoubtedly true, if one looks at the deeds rather than listens to the words, of its leading proponents.
The power of the complex has penetrated all branches of government, most strikingly the foreign policy of the country. If one looks at the current members of the Council on Foreign Relations (sans Richard Haas who was retired recently), the body which was set up in 1921 to formulate and guide the US Foreign policy, all its officers are of the warmongering orientation even though the policies they are advocating are wrapped up in lies of spreading democracy, human rights and similar virtue-signalling aims.
A new phenomenon the complex is not, if you were to search YouTube for ‘Eisenhower's "Military-Industrial Complex" Speech Origins and Significance’ you can hear Ike talking about it and the danger it would spell for the Republic if allowed to continue to influence the country’s policies. It seems that nobody has heeded the warning, the complex has grown in power and reach and today it draws its muscle not only from the upper layers of the American society, to whom it has been furnishing the spoils - a claim usually made by the Left-leaning critics - but also from ordinary people, through both their employment and pensions.
The argument advanced in this short piece is that it’s near impossible to break or even curtail noticeably the power of the complex: what can stop it only God knows.
Since about the mid-80s last century, most of the American manufacturing capacity that forged the basis of the country’s unquestionable post WW2 hegemony has been moved offshore, to start with almost exclusively to China. The Middle Kingdom opened up for foreign investment some six years after the death of Mao in 1976, the Japanese firms in the auto and high-tech industries were the first to spot the opportunity to slash the cost of manufacture massively, with Chinese labour rates about a twentieth of theirs, and almost a tenth of Western ones.
Only one sector of the former American manufacturing might remained largely onshore in America - the design, manufacture and servicing of the military hardware and related software, the sector usually called the military/industrial complex.
Even today, the tools of killing are still produced to a large extent domestically, the 1,000 plus companies engaged in it can be found in each one of the fifty states of the Republic, the sector being the second largest contributor to GDP and employs, by the broadest definition (from the supply of military boot laces), close to 15% of the US workforce of 160m.
Every pension plan of those in employment in the Republic has in it the stock and shares as well as the debt (mostly corporate bonds) of the companies involved in making or servicing the military gear. These pension plans hold well over $6.0 trillion in assets on behalf of the roughly 60 million active holders of the plans. The pension assets of those already retired, from which one’s monthly income is drawn, have a very similar profile - the equity and debt of the military/industrial complex companies form their largest part.
Could any American politician seriously argue for the curtailment of the military/military sector’s hold on the America’s governance, and her foreign policy in particular, if the outcome were to inevitably lead to much reduced employment, a noticeable cut in the value of individual pension plans, and above all the loss of the remuneration and benefits in kind for the top layer of the military companies’ managements and the multiplicity of advisory boards, non-executive directors and such like, the positions frequently occupied by a myriad of former politicians and the top federal or state employees?
In one respect what the industrial/military complex turns out - the tanks, the missiles, the munitions - are no different from what the makers of cars, fridges, or the suppliers of the foodstuff are furnishing - in that it has to be consumed or amortised. A company cannot keep on producing cars or growing tomatoes and then store the output forever, any more than a company making military gear can manufacture and store fighter jets or boxes of ammunition can, without someone somewhere making use of the stuff. That’s not doable. The cars as well as the fighter jets have to be used up or scrapped and get replaced by more up-to-date models, almost inevitably more expensive than the older ones.
The same goes for the military ‘perishables’ the munitions, the shells, the missiles, the cartridges. Just as the perishables in the consumer market, they too must be used up if only because of their limited shelf life, and also because of the obsolescence.
There is however, one key difference between the consumer goods markets and that of the military hardware, in that the buyer of the former is the man on the street, the pricing governed by competition. Military hardware however, is bought by the Government or its agencies. Prices are of little importance. Competition is minimal and the Treasury can either tax or borrow the cash required to purchase everything the military say they need. Often the specification of the hardware changes before the completion of the contract, which inevitably results in a change in the contracted price, almost exclusively upwards, as an example, Lockheed Martin's $1.7 trillion F-35 fighter jet project is 10 years late and 80% over budget.
Conflicts of any size, but the bigger the better, are therefore a must for the American Republic. They are needed for as long as the military/industrial complex remains the major and the most valuable pillar underpinning the diminishing US hegemony, hence the new Defence budget, close to a trillion bucks, and bigger than the military budgets of the next ten biggest military spenders including China and Russia, and roughly the same size as the US Medicare budget.
It may seem too simplistic to explain the imperialistic nature of America’s foreign policy by the clout the military/industrial complex exercises on the governance of the Republic by its significance for the America’s economy at large, and by its unquestionable buttressing of the US’s flailing hegemony, but the evidence points solidly in that direction. Sad and dangerous to the world as it maybe, it is true.
What chance is there, therefore, that the US militaristic posture, the seeding and fuelling of as many regional conflicts lasting as long as possible, can be brought to a halt, or at least noticeably reduced?