The US Military Industrial
Complex no longer needs neither actual wars nor the threat of war for its own
survival. This factor could actually change dynamic of this
institution/bureaucracy in our lifetimes and it may actually be changing as we
speak.
Very often
something will evolve and become ubiquitous to the degree that we forget its
origin. Putting a dead tree in your house on Christmas is a good example, few
people think of why this is done, they just do it because it has been done for
a long time and thus seems completely natural and important to do so every
year. A justification for doing it is no longer needed, it is something done by
default. In some ways the necessity to start questionable wars of luxury is
much like that Christmas tree – an odd tradition that is not of an importance
or value anymore.
In order to
break this down we need to go back to the start.
It is hard for
people in our times, especially foreign people to understand the fact that the
United States was not a massive military power until WWII. Today sole
hyperpower was at a time not that long ago a much different nation militarily
and foreign policy speaking. In 1914 at the start of the Great War in Europe
the territorially massive United States had a total armed forces of around 166,000 men. From
1776 until that point the manpower of US forces was minimal by European
standards. That America of those times was an isolated self-focused America
that many today long for. When the US entered WWI shedding the binds of its
isolationist tendencies it bulked up to nearly 3,000,000 soldiers by the end of
1918. However, directly after the Great War finally ended the military severely
deflated itself back down much closer to its original size.
“The Good War”
in the 1940’s was the final nail in the isolationist coffin as American forces
would forever remain in the millions of men after the defeat of Germany and
Japan by the Allies.
The 1940s are
the point the point where the permanent military industrial complex that we
know of today starts to take hold. Slightly later it got the name by which we
call it today thanks to a speech by President Eisenhower at the very tail end
of his presidency in 1961. Sadly Mr. Eisenhower did nothing to stop the growth
of the warmachine only choosing to warn us about it with nearly no time left in
office. One would have expected bold action from a man known for his bravery
and cunning.
The ideological
justification for retaining a massive US military in peacetime was Communism. A global Communist threat
seemed like something grand enough to be worth throwing away a large portion of
America’s traditional (and very successful) identity.
As time went on
wars of questionable origins in Korea and Vietnam continued to provide proof of
the need for massive military spending and continued expansion.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 90’s
American forces could have (in theory) reduced in size as there was no longer
any real geopolitical competitor to the US. This was a “turning point” moment
when America could possibly have gone back to being the America that was and
scaled down to a few hundred thousand men under the umbrella of a few thousand
nuclear warheads and enough billions of dollars to make sure that the US would
never “fall behind” from a weapons standpoint.
But this was not
to be. Washington chose to go with “Global Hegemon” America and has not looked
back. But at this point massive military spending still required some sort of
reason to spend hundreds of billions per year. Iraq and Afghanistan were enough
justification to keep millions of men in uniforms on bases all over the world
mostly doing pushups and cleaning the toilets in a “global war on terror”.
Now there is a
new “Russian threat” that is hard for politicians to define or prove exists but
is just juicy enough for them it is still call for increasing defense spending
or build system X in European country Y that they can’t find on a map.
As we can see
since WWII, the US military has gone from dealing with direct threats (Germany,
Japan) to direct threats via proxy (The Soviet Union in Korea/Vietnam) to
overinflated threats (Iraq, Afghanistan) to fake threats (today’s Russia). I
would argue and even offer that at this point there is no political means nor
will to ever go “back” to the isolated America. That America as a concept is
dead and both the politicians and the public understand and support the US
having a massive military. No threat is needed any more as having a massive
military is no longer even a question. It is a default position like seeing the
world as round – only a tiny handful of lunatics of zero influence could argue
otherwise and debating with them is pointless.
Furthermore as we have seen any politician who goes against
the military industrial complex (MIC) is deemed a traitor and “against the
troops”.
This current
state of things is actually very good from the standpoint of peace and
America’s reputation. Since war is no longer necessary to justify the MIC the
US is much more free to not engage in warfare. In fact war is completely unnecessary.
At some point advertisements for automobiles had to stop mentioning their
superiority to horses. We are at the same point with the MIC. Politicians and the
mainstream media do not need to search for/create enemies because they are no
longer needed. The US military is to be forever massive and expensive and
profitable and it may even become very peaceful because of this. Why work when
you can make billions doing virtually nothing?
