[But Is It Truly the Arsenal of Democracy?]
[[link removed]]

GOOD TIMES FOR THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX  
[[link removed]]


 

william D. Hartung
November 12, 2023
TomDispatch
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ But Is It Truly the Arsenal of Democracy? _

Diagnosing a Military-Industrial Complex -- What's wrong with me,
Doc?, Khalil Bendib / Institute for Policy Studies

 

The _New York Times_ headline
[[link removed]] said
it all: “Middle East War Adds to Surge in International Arms
Sales.” The conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine, and beyond may be causing
immense and unconscionable human suffering, but they are also boosting
the bottom lines of the world’s arms manufacturers. There was a
time when such weapons sales at least sparked talk of “the merchants
of death
[[link removed]]”
or of “war profiteers.” Now, however, is distinctly not that
time, given the treatment of the industry by the mainstream media and
the Washington establishment, as well as the nature of current
conflicts. Mind you, the American arms industry already dominates
[[link removed]] the
international market in a staggering fashion, controlling 45% of all
such sales globally, a gap only likely to grow more extreme in the
rush to further arm allies in Europe and_ _the Middle East in the
context of the ongoing wars in those regions.

In his nationally televised address
[[link removed]] about
the Israel-Hamas and Russia-Ukraine wars, President Biden described
the American arms industry in remarkably glowing terms, noting that,
“just as in World War II, today patriotic American workers are
building the arsenal of democracy and serving the cause of freedom.”
From a political and messaging perspective, the president cleverly
focused on the workers involved in producing such weaponry rather than
the giant corporations that profit from arming Israel, Ukraine, and
other nations at war. But profit they do and, even more strikingly,
much of the revenues that flow to those firms is pocketed
as staggering executive salaries
[[link removed]] and stock
buybacks
[[link removed]] that
only boost shareholder earnings further.

President Biden also used that speech as an opportunity to tout the
benefits of military aid and weapons sales to the U.S. economy:

“We send Ukraine equipment sitting in our stockpiles. And when we
use the money allocated by Congress, we use it to replenish our own
stores, our own stockpiles, with new equipment. Equipment that defends
America and is made in America. Patriot missiles for air defense
batteries, made in Arizona. Artillery shells manufactured in 12 states
across the country, in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas. And so much more.”

In short, the military-industrial complex is riding high, with
revenues pouring in and accolades emanating from the top political
levels in Washington. But is it, in fact, an arsenal of
democracy? Or is it an amoral enterprise, willing to sell to any
nation, whether a democracy, an autocracy, or anything in between?

ARMING CURRENT CONFLICTS

The U.S. should certainly provide Ukraine with what it needs to defend
itself from Russia’s invasion. Sending arms alone, however, without
an accompanying diplomatic strategy is a recipe for an endless,
grinding war (and endless profits for those arms makers) that could
always escalate into a far more direct and devastating conflict
between the U.S., NATO, and Russia. Nevertheless, given the current
urgent need to keep supplying Ukraine, the sources of the relevant
weapons systems are bound to be corporate giants like Raytheon and
Lockheed Martin. No surprise there, but keep in mind that they’re
not doing any of this out of charity.

Raytheon CEO Gregory Hayes acknowledged as much, however modestly, in
an interview
[[link removed]] with
the _Harvard Business Review _early in the Ukraine War:

“[W]e don’t apologize for making these systems, making these
weapons… the fact is eventually we will see some benefit in the
business over time. Everything that’s being shipped into Ukraine
today, of course, is coming out of stockpiles, either at DoD [the
Department of Defense] or from our NATO allies, and that’s all great
news. Eventually we’ll have to replenish it and we will see a
benefit to the business over the next coming years.”

Hayes made a similar point recently in response to a question
[[link removed]] from a
researcher at Morgan Stanley on a call with Wall Street analysts. The
researcher noted that President Biden’s proposed
multi-billion-dollar package of military aid for Israel and Ukraine
“seems to fit quite nicely with Raytheon’s defense portfolio.”
Hayes responded that “across the entire Raytheon portfolio you’re
going to see a benefit of this restocking on top of what we think will
be an increase in the DoD topline as we continue to replenish these
stocks.” Supplying Ukraine alone, he suggested, would yield
billions in revenues over the coming few years with profit margins of
10% to 12%.

Beyond such direct profits, there’s a larger issue here: the way
this country’s arms lobby is using the war to argue for a variety
of favorable actions
[[link removed]] that
go well beyond anything needed to support Ukraine. Those include less
restrictive, multi-year contracts; reductions in protections against
price gouging; faster approval of foreign sales; and the construction
of new weapons plants. And keep in mind that all of this is happening
as a soaring Pentagon budget threatens to hit an astonishing $1
trillion
[[link removed]] within
the next few years.

As for arming Israel, including $14 billion
[[link removed]] in
emergency military aid recently proposed by President Biden, the
horrific attacks perpetrated by Hamas simply don’t justify the
all-out war President Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has launched
against more than two million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, with so
many thousands of lives
[[link removed]] already lost and
untold additional casualties to come. That devastating approach to
Gaza in no way fits the category of defending democracy, which means
that weapons companies profiting from it will be complicit in the
unfolding humanitarian catastrophe.

REPRESSION ENABLED, DEMOCRACY DENIED

Over the years, far from being a reliable arsenal of democracy,
American arms manufacturers have often helped undermine democracy
globally, while enabling ever greater repression and conflict — a
fact largely ignored in recent mainstream coverage of the industry.
For example, in a 2022 report
[[link removed]] for
the Quincy Institute, I noted that, of the 46 then-active conflicts
globally, 34 involved one or more parties armed by the United
States. In some cases, American arms supplies were modest, but in
many other conflicts such weaponry was central to the military
capabilities of one or more of the warring parties.

Nor do such weapons sales promote democracy over autocracy, a
watchword of the Biden administration’s approach to foreign policy.
In 2021, the most recent year for which full statistics are available,
the U.S. armed 31 nations that Freedom House, a non-profit that tracks
global trends in democracy, political freedom, and human
rights, designated
[[link removed]] as
“not free.”

The most egregious recent example in which the American arms industry
is distinctly culpable when it comes to staggering numbers of civilian
deaths would be the Saudi Arabian/United Arab Emirates (UAE)-led
coalition’s intervention in Yemen, which began
[[link removed]] in
March 2015 and has yet to truly end. Although the active military
part of the conflict is now in relative abeyance, a partial blockade
[[link removed]] of
that country continues to cause needless suffering for millions of
Yemenis.  Between bombing, fighting on the ground, and the impact of
that blockade, there have been nearly 400,000
[[link removed].] casualties. Saudi
air strikes
[[link removed]],
using American-produced planes and weaponry, caused the bulk of
civilian deaths from direct military action.

Congress did make unprecedented efforts to block
[[link removed]] specific
arms sales to Saudi Arabia and rein in
[[link removed]] the
American role in the conflict via a War Powers Resolution, only to see
legislation vetoed
[[link removed]] by
President Donald Trump. Meanwhile, bombs provided by Raytheon and
Lockheed Martin were routinely used 
[[link removed]]to
target civilians, destroying residential neighborhoods, factories,
hospitals, a wedding, and even a school bus
[[link removed]].

When questioned about whether they feel any responsibility for how
their weapons have been used, arms companies generally pose as passive
bystanders, arguing that all they’re doing is following policies
made in Washington. At the height of the Yemen war, Amnesty
International asked
[[link removed]] firms that
were supplying military equipment and services to the Saudi/UAE
coalition whether they were ensuring that their weaponry wouldn’t be
used for egregious human rights abuses. Lockheed Martin typically
offered a robotic response, asserting that “defense exports are
regulated by the U.S. government and approved by both the Executive
Branch and Congress to ensure that they support U.S. national security
and foreign policy objectives.” Raytheon simply stated that its
sales “of precision-guided munitions to Saudi Arabia have been and
remain in compliance with U.S. law.”

HOW THE ARMS INDUSTRY SHAPES POLICY

Of course, weapons firms are not merely subject to U.S. laws, but
actively seek to shape them, including exerting considerable effort to
block legislative efforts to limit arms sales. Raytheon typically put
major behind-the-scenes effort into keeping a significant sale of
precision-guided bombs to Saudi Arabia on track. In May 2018, then-CEO
Thomas Kennedy even personally visited the office of Senate Foreign
Relations Committee chair Robert Menendez (D-NJ) to
(unsuccessfully) press him
[[link removed]] to
drop a hold on that deal. That firm also cultivated close ties
[[link removed]] with
the Trump administration, including presidential trade adviser Peter
Navarro, to ensure its support for continuing sales to the Saudi
regime even after the murder 
[[link removed]]of
prominent Saudi journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi.

The list of major human rights abusers that receive U.S.-supplied
weaponry is long
[[link removed]] and
includes (but isn’t faintly limited to) Saudi Arabia, the UAE,
Bahrain, Egypt, Turkey, Nigeria, and the Philippines. Such sales can
have devastating human consequences. They also support regimes that
all too often destabilize their regions and risk embroiling the United
States directly in conflicts.

U.S.-supplied arms also far too regularly fall into the hands of
Washington’s adversaries. As an example consider the way the
UAE transferred
[[link removed]] small
arms and armored vehicles produced by American weapons makers to
extremist militias in Yemen, with no apparent consequences
[[link removed]],
even though such acts clearly violated American arms export laws.
Sometimes, recipients of such weaponry even end up fighting each
other, as when Turkey used
[[link removed]] U.S.-supplied
F-16s in 2019 to bomb U.S.-backed Syrian forces involved in the fight
against Islamic State terrorists.

Such examples underscore the need to scrutinize U.S. arms exports far
more carefully. Instead, the arms industry has promoted an
increasingly “streamlined” process of approval of such weapons
sales, campaigning 
[[link removed]]for
numerous measures that would make it even easier to arm foreign
regimes regardless of their human-rights records or support for the
interests Washington theoretically promotes. These have included an
“Export Control Reform Initiative
[[link removed]]”
heavily promoted by the industry during the Obama and Trump
administrations that ended up ensuring a further relaxation 
[[link removed]]of
scrutiny over firearms exports. It has, in fact, eased the way for
sales that, in the future, could put U.S.-produced weaponry in the
hands of tyrants, terrorists, and criminal organizations.

Now, the industry is promoting
[[link removed]] efforts
to get weapons out the door ever more quickly through “reforms” to
the Foreign Military Sales program in which the Pentagon essentially
serves as an arms broker between those weapons corporations and
foreign governments.

REINING IN THE MIC

The impetus to move ever more quickly on arms exports and so further
supersize this country’s already staggering weapons manufacturing
base will only lead to yet more price gouging
[[link removed]] by
arms corporations. It should be a government imperative to guard
against such a future, rather than fuel it. Alleged security concerns,
whether in Ukraine, Israel, or elsewhere, shouldn’t stand in the way
of vigorous congressional oversight. Even at the height of World War
II, a time of daunting challenges to American security, then-Senator
Harry Truman established
[[link removed]] a
committee to root out war profiteering.

Yes, your tax dollars are being squandered in the rush to build and
sell ever more weaponry abroad. Worse yet, for every arms transfer
that serves a legitimate defensive purpose, there is another — not
to say others — that fuels conflict and repression, while only
increasing the risk that, as the giant weapons corporations and their
executives make fortunes, this country will become embroiled in more
costly foreign conflicts.

One possible way to at least slow that rush to sell would be to
“flip the script
[[link removed]]”
on how Congress reviews weapons exports. Current law requires a
veto-proof majority of both houses of Congress to block a questionable
sale. That standard — perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn —
has never
[[link removed].] (yes, _never_!)
been met, thanks to the millions of dollars
[[link removed]] in annual
election financial support that the weapons companies offer our
congressional representatives. Flipping the script would mean
requiring affirmative congressional approval of any major sales to key
nations, greatly increasing the chances of stopping dangerous deals
before they reach completion.

Praising the U.S. arms industry as the “arsenal of democracy”
obscures the numerous ways it undermines our security and wastes our
tax dollars. Rather than romanticizing the military-industrial
complex, isn’t it time to place it under greater democratic
control? After all, so many lives depend on it.

_Copyright 2023 William D. Hartung_

_WILLIAM D. HARTUNG is a senior research fellow at the Quincy
Institute for Responsible Statecraft
[[link removed]],
where his work focuses on the arms industry and U.S. military budget._

_Follow TOMDISPATCH on Twitter
[[link removed]] and join us on Facebook
[[link removed]]. Check out the newest Dispatch
Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel, Songlands
[[link removed]] (the
final one in his Splinterlands series), Beverly Gologorsky’s
novel Every Body Has a Story
[[link removed]], and
Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War
[[link removed]],
as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century:
The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power
[[link removed]], John
Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World
War II
[[link removed]], and
Ann Jones’s They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from
America’s Wars: The Untold Story
[[link removed]]._

 

* democracy
[[link removed]]
* U.S. foreign policy
[[link removed]]
* military industrial complex
[[link removed]]
* lobbyists
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]