THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF AMERICAN WARFARE, PART FIVE

Paul A. C. Koistinen, State of War: The Political Economy of American Warfare, 1945-2011 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2012) ("To meet the international challenges of the Cold War and post-Cold War world, the United States, for the first time in its history, has maintained large military structures during years of relative peace. Moreover, the army, navy, air force, and related services have been armed and supplied principally by a formidable privately owned defense industry, including some of the nation's largest corporations as well as a host of other firms. Large-scale private arsenals are also historically unprecedented in America; their significance is multiplied manyfold by exceptionally sophisticated weaponry centered around nuclear armaments and aerospace and electronic advancements that require extensive research and development by scientists, engineers, and technicians. These developments have led to enormous defense budgets that reach as high as 14 percent of the gross domestic product and 70 percent of annual government spending, and they seldom fall below 5 and 20 percent, respectively. During the period of more than six decades, multiple trillions of dollars have been expended on national security." "Together, a massive Cold War military and a powerful private defense industry have accumulated vast influence and power that directly or indirectly affects practically every area of foreign and domestic life...." (The so-called military-industrial complex (MIC) did not create itself. It grew out of clashing goals for reconstructing and restructuring war-shattered Europe and Japan and weakened or collapsing colonial empires in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. America's drive for an 'open-door' world of democratic capitalism faced the real or perceived ambition of communist-led expansion on the part of the Soviet Union. Drawing on past policies, the United States at the outset intended to shape the world in its own image through the use of it unequal industrial-financial strength, backed by a modest military." "By 1949-1950, with American plans for stabilizing western Europe stalled, Russia detonating an atomic weapon, China falling under communist control, and war breaking out in Korea, the nation felt compelled to militarize its foreign policies. Thereafter, a bipolar world emerged in stages, with the United States and the Union of Soviet Republics participating in a potentially catastrophic nuclear arms race, Europe becoming an armed camp, and the two major powers competing for power and position throughout the developing world. The virtual collapse of the Soviet Union between 1989 and 1991 ended what had become a dangerous and destructive running confrontation between two imperial systems.""Although it developed as a result of the militarized Cold War, the MIC eventually began to grow beyond the control of responsible authorities. It has attempted to block or resist efforts to reduce defense budgets or reject favored weapon systems, to control or halt the arms race, to improve relations with the Soviet Union and other adversaries, and to adopt more enlightened policies toward the developing world. Nearly twenty years after the Soviet Union fell apart, defense budgets (excluding the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) are higher today than at any time during the Cold War." Id. at 7-8. Reading these five volumes of Professor Koistinen on the political economy of American Warfare has, to say the least, an education. If one comes away thinking America is essentially a military regime, one would be on the mark. In a democracy, or at least as it was intended by the Founders, civilians--true civilians--were supposed to be in ultimate control of the military. Technically, on paper, civilians are in control. Technically, the military is accountable to civilians. But that is seriously misleading. The civilians of the Military-Industrial Complex are in charge, and they are civilian only in the sense that they do not wear military uniforms. American democracy is at serious risk.).