Chuck Spinney — What is the Real Price of Starting Another Cold War?

The chart puts this scam in perspective. Compared to the two lefthand charts, the Pentagon’s deflators (i.e., the righthand graph) make the current defense budgets appear to be less of a departure from past budgets. The right hand chart is the one that the Pentagon briefs to Congress and the press dutifully regurgitates. It implies the current defense budget and future plans are less of a distortionary burden on the economy than is actually the case. (Readers interested in learning more about the inflation scam are referred to this report for a particularly outrageous case study documenting how the Pentagon scammed the Congress and the America people into believing the Reagan spendup was less wasteful than it really was.)

The charts give you an idea of the golden cornucopia awaiting the Military – Industrial – Congressional Complex (MICC), if its proponents can start a new Cold War. Anyone who doubts the possibility of the MICC’s capacity to pull this off, need only use these charts to think about (1) the durability of the so-called “peace” dividend accompanying the end of the Cold War in 1990 and (2) how the MICC exploited the horror of 9-11 to power boost the defense budget to levels undreamed of by the threat inflators during the worst days of the Cold War or Vietnam. Just try to think about what a new wave of cold-war hysteria could trigger.

Counterpunch
What is the Real Price of Starting Another Cold War?
Franklin “Chuck” Spinney is a former military analyst for the Pentagon