Today, America’s foreign policy is a shambles. Its primary features are (1) a perpetual war on terror, and (2) the seemingly inevitable march into a new and unnecessary cold war against Russia and China. At the same time, President Obama is leaving his successor with a budget plan containing a front loaded and political engineered* procurement bow wave that guarantees steeply rising defense expenditures well into the next decade and possibly beyond. Such long term increases in the defense budget can only be justified by a new cold war. Yet the United States now spends far more on the military than any other country. Add in the expenditures of our allies, and the spending advantage over any conceivable combination of adversaries becomes overwhelming. Nevertheless, US citizens are more fearful than they were during the Cold War, and politicians and the yellow journalism of the mainstream media are hyping those fears to a greater extent than they did during the Cold War.Goldman Sachs is not the only giant vampire squid. As always, follow the money.
What is going on?
Risking nuclear war, you say? Small potatoes given the enormous pile of $ on the table.
The Blaster
Why Are Defense Policy Wonks So Ineffectual?
Franklin C. "Chuck" Spinney, former Pentagon military analyst
Why Are Defense Policy Wonks So Ineffectual?
Franklin C. "Chuck" Spinney, former Pentagon military analyst
Maybe nuclear weapons are just an immovable rock on the geopolitical chessboard that everyone manoeuvres around, playing the game as usual, ignoring the possibility some idiot might blow it up. Financial war, conventional war, resource war, environmental war, social war, political war, war of words, war windup dolls, Hollywood war – what do they want? The ultimate prize is held up to be peace. The triumph of good over evil. Oh!
ReplyDeleteThe war budget reassigned to peace, and a defence budget assigned to national defence (like for a tsunami), would do it. As the article said, one Trident is deterrent enough. There has never ever been anything achieved on the face of this earth by war, that could not be better achieved, by peace.