{"id":2748,"date":"2014-01-21T13:22:07","date_gmt":"2014-01-21T19:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/?p=2748"},"modified":"2014-01-21T13:22:07","modified_gmt":"2014-01-21T19:22:07","slug":"defense-spending-putting-toys-before-boys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/defense-spending-putting-toys-before-boys\/","title":{"rendered":"Defense Spending: Putting Toys Before Boys"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Franklin C. Spinney, Counter Punch
\nclick here for original article<\/a><\/p>\n

Being pro-defense in the Hall of Mirrors of Versailles on the Potomac means, in the salty words of my late friend Col. David Hackworth, one of the U.S. Army\u2019s most decorated combat soldiers, putting\u00a0\u201cthe toys before boys.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Hackworth meant the number one budget priority in the Pentagon and the Halls of Congress is to reward the domestic political faction that benefits from buying and operating high cost, high complexity weapons at the expense of (1) weapons that work for the the men and women at the pointy end of the spear and (2) providing an affordable defense program that does not rob taxpayers of money needed for other national needs \u2014 like roads and sewers, schools, social security, etc.<\/p>\n

The faction that benefits from a policy to spend on \u201ctoys\u201d is the coalition of (1) weapons contractors, (2)\u00a0military officers and civilians who promote those weapons to enhance their careers and post retirement employment opportunities, and (3) legislators who benefit from the increasing flows of dollars, jobs, and profits to their districts. \u00a0This trinity is the primary faction that benefits from the development, procurement, and contracted support dollars associated with buying hyper-expensive programs like the F-35, the B-2 bomber, the new aircraft carrier, etc. \u00a0But but it is not the only grouping that benefits. \u00a0There are other less obvious players in the Military \u2013 Industrial \u2013 Congessional Complex (MICC) \u2014 including, inter alia: influence peddlers and wannabees in lobbying firms, so-called intellectuals in think tanks who derive their funding and influence by rationalizing the party line for the programs and money flowing to MICC. Their collective behaviour is lubricated by the network \u2014 really an intricately woven tapestry \u2014 of revolving doors leading into and out of jobs in the Pentagon, Congress and industry. Other beneficiaries of this promotional network include those who make money or gain access to power by hyping the benefits of the \u2018toys,\u2019 including members of the press, particularly the broadcast media, movie makers (e.g., Top Gun), novelists (e.g., the late Tom Clancy). \u00a0There is slew of lesser important fringe players as well, including professors in universities, and all sorts of enthusiasts and groupies, feeding off the tributaries of the golden flow to the main players.<\/p>\n

President Eisenhower\u00a0presciently\u00a0warned us about this web of interests in his farewell address in 1961. \u00a0Today, its distorting influence\u00a0on the popular imagination pervades American culture, from to bottom to top; from our school rooms, to the hobby shops selling video games, to movies, to the thinly disguised advertisements on content generators, like PBS\u2019s so-called advertisement-free Newshour, to the faux patriotism of flag pins on the lapels of politicians and yellow ribbon bumper stickers.<\/p>\n

Yet notwithstanding all the technical hype about revolutionary military capabilities embodied in our vaunted technological supremacy (i.e. in Hackworth\u2019s \u2018toys\u2019), America\u2019s success in real war has been dismal since the end of WWII, even while the resources devoted to these wars have gone thru the roof.<\/p>\n

The accumulating strategic and economic disaster has now metastasized in the ongoing global war on terror (GWOT) that began on 9-11. \u00a0The figure below is the proof.<\/p>\n

\"Def-Budget-Deal<\/a><\/p>\n

Based on official DoD data, this chart plots the defense budget in inflation-adjusted dollars over time. \u00a0It also places the historical budgets in the context of \u00a0in the omnibus spending bill just passed by Congress and signed by the President, as denoted by the red markers.\u00a0The red \u201cball\u201d depicts the base budget and the the red \u201cstar\u201d adds the supplemental war budget to the base budget, making it logically equivalent to past budgets.<\/p>\n

The recent budget deal, in effect, says the the United States will be spending more defense in FY 2014 to pay for 30,000 troops disengaging from a low-tempo war in Afghanistan than we payed in 1969 to keep 550,000 fighting a high-tempo war in Vietnam. \u00a0Moreover, in 1969, the defense budget also paid for much the larger forces needed to support a full-blown Cold War against the Soviet Union; whereas today, there is no funding requirement even close to that of the cold war.<\/p>\n

But there is more: the box plot shows the total 2014 budget will be higher than\u00a0three-quarters<\/em>\u00a0of all the budgets between 1948 and 2013 \u00a0(including several of the\u00a0 GWOT budgets). \u00a0Even the so-called \u201cbase budget\u201d will be a high budget by historical standards, as would have been the dreaded levels of the sequester, had they been adhered to. If you have any doubt about the MICC\u2019s grip on the popular imagination, the 2014 budget level is what the courtiers of Versailles, including the mass media, commonly refer to as an \u201cera of austerity\u201d or an era of \u201cfiscal constraints.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a normal world, it would be reasonable to ask what has all this money bought for the American taxpayer?<\/p>\n

Consider first the GWOT:\u00a0Iraq is a bloody disintegrating shambles; we are leaving Afghanistan with our tail between our legs; Libya became a fountainhead for weapons flowing to Jihadi factions throughout Africa and the Middle East; the drone war is creating enemies faster than we can kill them.<\/p>\n

Now, think about the rest of the military: The service chiefs are complaining to Congress about readiness problems, aging weapons, and the need to cut personnel costs and shrink forces further (a trend that began in 1957), because we have a modernization (toys) crisis. The buzz words du jour are \u201crecapitalize\u201d and \u201cre-set.\u201d<\/p>\n

And yet \u2026 \u00a0no one in the MICC is being asked to explain how spending so much money could be correlated with the rise of such horrific problems. \u00a0In fact, the Pentagon cannot even (and does not want to) audit its books, and Congress says it does have to pass one until 2017, even though it passed the law requiring the audits in 1990 \u2014 see this\u00a0link<\/a>\u00a0for a recent in-depth series of Reuters reports describing this problem.<\/p>\n

So, what is driving the budget train? \u00a0How can a citizen come to grips such a huge disaster, without being overwhelmed by the variety of its ever-changing complexity?<\/p>\n

Occasionally a sharp ray of sunlight shines thru the narrative fog of techno-hype that is blanketing this mess to expose the truly sordid nature of the MICC\u2019s game, so pithily summed up by Colonel Hackworth. \u00a0My good friend Andrew Cockburn brilliantly exposes the real nature of the Air Force\u2019s efforts to trash its most effective and cheapest weapon system \u2014 the A-10 Warthog, one of the few \u201ctoys\u201d that works for the \u201cboys\u201d and the \u201ctaxpayers\u201d alike). \u00a0And in so doing, Andrew provides an excellent case study of how the dirty game is played.<\/p>\n

The Air Force admits the A-10 is very effective and is low cost, but claims it is being forced to send the A-10 to bone yard as a budget \u2018austerity\u2019 measure in order to save more expensive, multi-use programs, like the problem-plagued \u00a0horror of horrors: the wildly expensive stealthy F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.<\/p>\n

Cockburn\u2019s report,\u00a0Tunnel Vision: Will the Air Force kill its most effective weapon?<\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0is in the forthcoming February 2014 issue of Harpers.<\/p>\n

While Andrew does not address the bomber question, I believe the A-10 caper is a cog in a larger gaming strategy to open a financial window for developing and buying a new long range stealth bomber. \u00a0This monster could make the F-35 look like an exercise in prudence. \u00a0Even though it is still only a paper airplane, bordering on a fantasy at this point, the Air Force wants to spend $379 million on it this year. \u00a0And its cost has already begun to grow: the long-term procurement cost of a program for only 100 bombers recently rose from $55 billion to $81 billion, or\u00a0by 47%<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 and the serious design work has not even begun!<\/p>\n

Moreover, this new strategic bomber can only be justified by a \u2018strategic\u2019 need to destroy so-called critical economic nodes of a rising superpower threat. \u00a0The only possible candidate is China, the world\u2019s largest exporter and second largest importer. \u00a0China is crucially dependent on shipping routes thru a few narrow, vulnerable choke points leading to and from its huge, easily bombed container ports on the coasts of the South and East China Seas, like Shanghai. \u00a0Nothing would enrich the future fortunes of MICC, and especially the Douhetian strategic bombing faction that controls the Air Force mentality, than a new Cold War \u00a0aimed at \u2018deterring\u2019 China, whatever that means.\u00a0\u00a0This deterrence would be achieved by having a U.S \u00a0capability to deny China access to world markets. This is the real intent behind the vacuously-stated anti-access\/area denial (A2AD) gibberish so popular in the AF and its wholly owned subsidiaries in the defense press and thinktanks. \u00a0To pulse its popularity \u2014 ask the Google.<\/p>\n

To be sure, getting rid of the highly effective A-10 is only part of the Air Force\u2019s larger agenda to start an unnecessary, but financially lucrative New Cold War. \u00a0And Cold Wars are better than hot wars for the MICC; not having to divert money into combat operations means even more money can be siphoned into the R&D and procurement accounts for buying the \u201ctoys.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is the\u00a0low cost<\/em>\u00a0of the A-10 that is the central to understanding the salience of Andrew\u2019s brilliantly written expos\u00e9 in this larger game.<\/p>\n

Sending the A-10 to the bone yard won\u2019t save much money in the grand scheme of things, but the A-10s effectiveness has become an embarrassment \u2014 a blemish in the AF\u2019s patina of strategic bombing and techno-war. \u00a0That blemish must be removed from view.\u00a0 Cockburn\u2019s essay is important because it gives the reader a sharp insight into the outrageous lengths the AF is willing to go to promote its budget-busting vision of hi-tech perpetual war based on strategic bombing and victory thru airpower alone.<\/p>\n

I urge you to read Andrew\u2019s\u00a0essay<\/a>\u00a0carefully \u2026 and pay particular attention to the explosive implications of the coverup implied by his closing line.<\/p>\n

Franklin \u201cChuck\u201d Spinney<\/strong><\/strong>\u00a0is a former military analyst for the Pentagon and\u00a0a contributor to\u00a0Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion<\/a>, published by AK Press. He\u00a0be reached at\u00a0chuck_spinney@mac.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Franklin C. Spinney, Counter Punch click here for original article Being pro-defense in the Hall of Mirrors of Versailles on the Potomac means, in the salty words of my late friend Col. David Hackworth, one of the U.S. Army\u2019s most decorated combat soldiers, putting\u00a0\u201cthe toys before boys.\u201d Hackworth meant the number one budget priority […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2749,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Def-Budget-Deal.jpeg?fit=179%2C245&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2748"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2750,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2748\/revisions\/2750"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}