The Money Power, Diplomacy, and the Military-Industrial Complex
By Kira Webster
This past September, the Department of Defense proposed a new policy plan for their contractors in an effort to boost performance expectations, cutting the cash flow in the early phases of the contracts from 80 percent to 50 percent. This new plan would help military efficiency, enforce more restrictions on companies convicted of fraud, and positively reinforce good work from contractors since cash flow would be determined based on the projects’ progress. There is an additional bonus – millions of taxpayer dollars would be saved. In 2008, the Federal Reserve cut their interest rates for contractors, but the financing rates have never changed, so the Defense Department has been overpaying them for years.
Defense companies did not take kindly to the new proposal, and ultimately, neither did many Republicans. Late September, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe sent a letter to Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan asking him to rescind the proposal. The letter argued: ‘‘with the sophisticated threats our nation now faces . . . our service members need the very best technology as quickly as possible. . . This new rule would discourage greater industry investment in innovation at a time when we need it most and will make it harder to attract and retain a technically skilled workforce necessary to tackle the most challenging national security problems.’’
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Thornberry’s campaign accepted over $280,000 from defense industries in 2017 and 2018. Inhofe has also accepted donations from defense industries, and has quietly advocated for the F-35 to be stationed in Tulsa, his hometown.
Since being met with harsh opposition by Republican lawmakers, they have walked back on their proposal, saying that “the rule was released too prematurely,” and that they will work with the Congress and other defense industries to develop a different plan. Following the Defense Department’s plans to work on a new plan, the Trump administration just released plans to ask Congress for a $54 billion increase in military spending.
While anyone can rightfully declare that providing our military with the best weapons is important, artillery functionality only becomes more desperate when diplomacy is lost. If Congress is able to argue that defense is so critical, why does the budget get cut for diplomacy, but raised for weapons? The Pentagon receives a 10 percent boost in budget while the State department and USAID got cut by 37 percent. Those percentages may not seem like much until you consider the fact that the 10% bump is equivalent to the whole State and USAID budget together.
It’s easy to focus on how to win the war with weapons and soldiers, but after the war is won, the problems aren’t all solved. After those last bullets, diplomacy has to step in and work on cleaning up war’s mess, otherwise the wars won’t stop. In 2009, the military surge in Afghanistan was supposed to be accompanied with a “civilian surge” of cultural experts to help rebuild the city. It was never able to happen due to lack of funding. Troops were sent in to fill the place of foreign service officers (State Department), which couldn’t go as well as planned since they lacked the training in local language, culture, and history. Ilan Goldberg, Senior Fellow and Director of the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Society, explains that America should strive to eliminate terrorism in the Middle East, and we have the force to do it, but after that, unless diplomats and development experts have enough resources to work with the local population, the terrorists will be back.
The Pentagon is essentially two different types of money pits as of right now: one for wars and one for Congress lawmakers. The more money from the Defense Department that contractors and defense industries receive, the more donations they can gift to politicians. And when a war can’t find the means for diplomacy, it inevitably will mean more war. If only diplomacy and negotiation were as tangible as an F-35 or a B-2 – the lobbyists would be able to influence a healthier direction.
