Secretary of Defense Mark Esper is a former Raytheon lobbyist and another example of President Trump’s penchant for frustrating his own policies by appointing to power people who oppose his policies. Why does Trump think he can expect a representative of the military/security complex to help him wind down Washington’s hegemonic policeman of the world routine?
Esper is out making
speeches that the military/security complex needs 5% real increase annually in
order to counter Russia and China—https://news.antiwar.com/2020/10/16/esper-calls-for-more-military-spending-to-face-china-and-russia/ . It is
Washington that is aggressive toward Russia and China, not the other way
around. The
military/security complex desperately needs foreign enemies in order to
maximize its budget and power. Russiagate’s purpose was to prevent
Trump from removing a valuable “enemy” by normalizing relations with Russia.
The US defense budget
could be cut in half and still be larger than the combined defense budgets of
Russia and China. China spends
about half as much of its economy on defense as the US. If
Russia and China intended aggression against the US, wouldn’t you expect to see
much higher spending on military?
You could make a case that
US defense spending is so high because of inefficiency and enormous profits
hidden in “cost overruns.” If so, then increased real spending
should come from strict budetary measures and oversight. We
should not be accepting a military spending system that cannot account for
trillions of dollars and is so poorly controlled that it cannot be audited. Will
patriotic conservatives ever realize that blind support for the Pentagon allows
the massive rip-off of taxpayers and the neglect of real needs all for nothing
but out-sized profits of arms makers?
The military/security
complex makes certain that no moves toward peace can succeed. Its
lobbyists have succeeded in undoing all the arms control agreements reached
with Russia since the 1960s. Russia’s President Putin has made
repeated offers to extend the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty, but
Washington has rejected his offer out of hand. The
reason is obvious. The
corrupt puppet regime of Obama agreed to a trillion dollar increase in nuclear
weapons spending, and the military/security complex means to get that money.