Bernie Finally Puts a Number on Cutting Military Spending — David Swanson

It's not straightforward. David Swanson explains the nuance.

Counterpunch
Bernie Finally Puts a Number on Cutting Military Spending
David Swanson

United States Budgetary Costs and Obligations of Post-9/11 Wars through FY2020: $6.4 Trillion — Neta C. Crawford

Since late 2001, the United States has appropriated and is obligated to spend an estimated $6.4 Trillion through Fiscal Year 2020 in budgetary costs related to and caused by the post-9/11 wars—an estimated $5.4 Trillion in appropriations in current dollars and an additional minimum of $1 Trillion for US obligations to care for the veterans of these wars through the next several decades. 2 The mission of the post-9/11 wars, as originally defined, was to defend the United States against future terrorist threats from al Qaeda and affiliated organizations. Since 2001, the wars have expanded from the fighting in Afghanistan, to wars and smaller operations elsewhere, in more than 80 countries — becoming a truly “global war on terror.” Further, the Department of Homeland Security was created in part to coordinate the defense of the homeland against terrorist attacks....

Overreaction to 9/11, or investment in maintaining global dominance?

Watson Institute of Brown University and The Fredrick S. Pardee Center of Boston University
United States Budgetary Costs and Obligations of Post-9/11 Wars through FY2020: $6.4 Trillion Neta C. Crawford, November 13, 2019

Nafeez Ahmed — Pentagon study declares American empire is ‘collapsing’

Report demands massive expansion of military-industrial complex to maintain global ‘access to resources’ 

n the first of a series, we report on stunning new evidence that the U.S. Department of Defense is waking up to the collapse of American primacy, and the rapid unraveling of the international order created by U.S. power after the Second World War.

But the Pentagon’s emerging vision of what comes next hardly inspires confidence. We breakdown both the insights and cognitive flaws in this vision. In future pieces we will ask the questions: What is really driving the end of the American empire? And based on that more accurate diagnosis of the problem, what is the real solution?

"We need a blank check."

Incidentally, the Vietnam War was sold to the public based on the "spread of freedom and democracy," and the domino effect. I was serving on active duty as an officer in the US Naval Reserve at the time and according to the DOD, maintaining access to resources in Southeast Asia and denying them to the enemy was a chief reason for making US  domination of the region a high strategic priority.

Here we go again.

The document is particularly candid in setting out why the U.S. sees these countries as threats — not so much because of tangible military or security issues, but mainly because their pursuit of their own legitimate national interests is, in itself, seen as undermining American dominance.

Russia and China are described as “revisionist forces” who benefit from the U.S.-dominated international order, but who dare to “seek a new distribution of power and authority commensurate with their emergence as legitimate rivals to U.S. dominance.” Russia and China, the analysts say, “are engaged in a deliberate program to demonstrate the limits of U.S. authority, will, reach, influence, and impact.”

The premise of this conclusion is that the U.S.-backed “status quo” international order is fundamentally “favorable” for the interests of the U.S. and its allies. Any effort to make global order also work “favorably” for anyone else is automatically seen as a threat to U.S. power and interests....

The document also sets out the real reasons that the U.S. is hostile to “revolutionary forces” like Iran and North Korea: they pose fundamental obstacles to U.S. imperial influence in those regions. They are:

“… neither the products of, nor are they satisfied with, the contemporary order… At a minimum, they intend to destroy the reach of the U.S.-led order into what they perceive to be their legitimate sphere of influence. They are also resolved to replace that order locally with a new rule set dictated by them.”

Far from insisting, as the U.S. government does officially, that Iran and North Korea pose as nuclear threats, the document instead insists they are considered problematic for the expansion of the “U.S.-led order.”...

Summing it up.

This is a war, then, between US-led capitalist [neoliberal] globalization, and anyone who resists it.

And to win it, the document puts forward a combination of strategies: consolidating the U.S. intelligence complex and using it more ruthlessly; intensifying mass surveillance and propaganda to manipulate popular opinion; expanding U.S. military clout to ensure access to “strategic regions, markets, and resources”.

Even so, the overarching goal is somewhat more modest — to prevent the U.S.-led order from collapsing further:

“…. while the favorable U.S.-dominated status quo is under significant internal and external pressure, adapted American power can help to forestall or even reverse outright failure in the most critical regions”.

The hope is that the U.S. will be able to fashion “a remodeled but nonetheless still favorable post-primacy international order.”

INSURGE intelligence - Medium
Pentagon study declares American empire is ‘collapsing’
Nafeez Ahmed

Mark Hensch — Trump defines his brand of conservatism

GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump offered his personal definition of conservatism on Sunday amid criticism he is not a true Republican.

“Well, for me, conservatism as it pertains to our country is fiscal,” Trump told host Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“We have to be strong and secure and get rid of our debt,” he said. “The military has to be powerful and not necessarily used, but very powerful.”

“I want people to be taken care of from a healthcare standpoint,” Trump added. “I want Social Security without cuts. And to me, conservative means a strong county with very little debt.”

Looks like The Donald can't add, or else he has a plan for the US to become a permanent net exporter.

The Hill
Trump defines his brand of conservatism

Mark Hensch

Robert Parry — Seeking War to the End of the World

Neocon Washington power couple Kagan and Nuland on the march.

If the neoconservatives have their way again, U.S. ground troops will reoccupy Iraq, the U.S. military will take out Syria’s secular government (likely helping Al Qaeda and the Islamic State take over), and the U.S. Congress will not only kill the Iran nuclear deal but follow that with a massive increase in military spending.

Like spraying lighter fluid on a roaring barbecue, the neocons also want a military escalation in Ukraine to burn the ethnic Russians out of the east and the neocons dream of spreading the blaze to Moscow with the goal of forcing Russian President Vladimir Putin from the Kremlin. In other words, more and more fires of Imperial “regime change” abroad even as the last embers of the American Republic die at home.…

On Friday, Kagan’s column baited the Republican Party to do more than just object to President Barack Obama’s Iranian nuclear deal. Kagan called for an all-out commitment to neoconservative goals, including military escalations in the Middle East, belligerence toward Russia and casting aside fiscal discipline in favor of funneling tens of billions of new dollars to the Pentagon.…

 Consortium News
Seeking War to the End of the World
Robert Parry