By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, September 123, 2024
The New York Times is hyping a report by war profiteers proposing higher war spending.
The report is here. It’s on the website of the United States Senate Armed “Services” Committee, but the authors are Congresswoman Jane Harman, chair; Ambassador Eric Edelman, vice chair; General John M. Keane; Thomas G. Mahnken; Mara Rudman; Mariah Sixkiller; Alissa Starzak; Roger Zakheim.
Harman has not actually been a Congresswoman for 13 years, 10 of which years she has spent working for the weapons-company-funded Wilson Center, which also misleadingly advertises itself as a purely Congressional entity. Edelman has not been an ambassador for 15 years but has worked for the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies which is funded by foundations which are funded by weapons companies, as is a great deal at Johns Hopkins which also has a U.S.-military-funded University Affiliated Research Center. Jack Keane hasn’t been a general for 21 years but prior to that made a career of escalating wars; now he’s at the weapons-company-funded Institute for the Study of War. Mahnken’s weapons funding comes from, among other places, the weapons-company-funded Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Rudman has worked for the weapons-company-funded Center for American Progress. Sixkiller works for Hakluyt & Company, which works for weapons dealers. Starzak works for military contractor Cloudfare. Zakheim works for the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, and, like several of these people, has worked for the U.S. military and other parts of the U.S. government.
Of course, the New York Times does not tell you that any of these people are in any way supported by the MICIMATT.
The weapons-funded report linked above tells us that U.S. military spending is declining as a percentage of GDP, that China is “outpacing the United States and has
largely negated the U.S. military advantage in the Western Pacific,” that “China’s overall annual spending on defense is estimated at as much as $711 billion,” and that “Russia will devote 29 percent of its federal budget this year on national defense.” The technical term in the U.S. government for this information is rank bullshit.
Using SIPRI figures, which leave out various things (over a half a trillion dollars’ worth in the case of the U.S. by some analyses) but allow for comparison, of 230 other countries, the U.S. spends more than 227 of them combined on its military. Russia and China spend a combined 21% of what the U.S. and its allies spend on war. The United States maintains 917 military bases outside its borders, Russia 58 and China 6. Of 230 other countries, the U.S. exports more weaponry than 228 of them combined. Most places with wars manufacture no weapons. Most wars have U.S. weapons on both sides. War is dominated by the United States.
In per-capita military spending, the U.S. is second only to Israel (no data on North Korea), and Russia comes in after the U.S. and 22 U.S. weapons customers, while China is way, way down the list.
The reason for pretending that military spending is “defense” is obvious, but it sure doesn’t make anyone safer. The reason for measuring it as a percentage of an economy should be obvious (it’s the only way to argue for even more U.S. military spending). But think about what it means. It means that the more militarism the world can get the better, so those who can afford it should fund it to the extent of their ability. This would make a lot of sense if we were talking about environmental protection or healthcare or housing, and in fact we could be if so much money weren’t going into the Death Star.
Finally, and I cannot stress this enough, the United States IS NOT IN THE WESTERN PACIFIC.
