{"id":1322135,"date":"2023-11-10T06:58:38","date_gmt":"2023-11-10T06:58:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/?p=304113"},"modified":"2023-11-10T06:58:38","modified_gmt":"2023-11-10T06:58:38","slug":"weapons-r-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/11\/10\/weapons-r-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Weapons \u2018R\u2019 Us"},"content":{"rendered":"\"\"<\/a>\n
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Image by Myko M.<\/p><\/div>\n

Perhaps you\u2019ve heard of\u00a0\u201cMakin\u2019 Thunderbirds,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0a hard-bitten rock & roll song by Bob Seger that I listened to 30 years ago while in college. It\u2019s about auto workers back in 1955 who were \u201cyoung and proud\u201d to be making Ford Thunderbirds. But in the early 1980s, Seger sings, \u201cthe plants have changed and you\u2019re lucky if you work.\u201d Seger caught the reality of an American manufacturing infrastructure that was seriously eroding as skilled and good-paying union jobs were cut or sent overseas, rarely to be seen again in these parts.<\/p>\n

If the U.S. auto industry has recently shown sparks of new life (though we\u2019re not making T-Birds or Mercuries or Oldsmobiles or Pontiacs or Saturns anymore), there is one form of manufacturing in which America is still dominant. When it comes to weaponry, to paraphrase Seger, we\u2019re still young and proud and makin\u2019 Predators and Reapers (as in unmanned aerial vehicles, or\u00a0drones<\/a>) and Eagles and Fighting Falcons (as in F-15 and F-16 combat jets), and outfitting them with the deadliest of weapons. In this market niche, we\u2019re still the envy of the world.<\/p>\n

Yes, we\u2019re the world\u2019s foremost \u201cmerchants of death,\u201d the title of a best-selling expos\u00e9 of the international arms trade published to acclaim in the U.S. in 1934. Back then, most Americans saw themselves as war-avoiders rather than as war-profiteers. The evil war-profiteers were mainly European arms makers like Germany\u2019s Krupp, France\u2019s Schneider, or Britain\u2019s Vickers.<\/p>\n

Not that America didn\u2019t have its own arms merchants. As the authors of\u00a0Merchants of Death<\/em>\u00a0noted, early on our country demonstrated a \u201cYankee propensity for extracting novel death-dealing knickknacks from [our] peddler\u2019s pack.\u201d Amazingly, the\u00a0Nye Committee in the U.S. Senate<\/a>\u00a0devoted 93 hearings from 1934 to 1936 to exposing America\u2019s own \u201cgreedy munitions interests.\u201d Even in those desperate depression days, a desire for profit and jobs was balanced by a strong sense of unease at this deadly trade, an unease reinforced by the horrors of and\u00a0hecatombs of dead<\/a>\u00a0from the First World War.<\/p>\n

We are uneasy no more. Today we take great pride (or at least have no shame) in being by far the world\u2019s number one arms-exporting nation. A few statistics bear this out. From 2006 to 2010, the U.S. accounted for\u00a0nearly one-third<\/a>\u00a0of the world\u2019s arms exports, easily surpassing a resurgent Russia in the \u201cLords of War\u201d race. Despite a decline in global arms sales in 2010 due to recessionary pressures, the U.S. increased its market share, accounting for\u00a0a whopping 53%<\/a>\u00a0of the trade that year. Last year saw the U.S. on pace to deliver\u00a0more than $46 billion<\/a>\u00a0in foreign arms sales. Who says America isn\u2019t number one anymore?<\/p>\n

For a shopping list of our arms trades, try searching the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute\u00a0database for arms exports and imports<\/a>. It reveals that, in 2010, the U.S. exported \u201cmajor conventional weapons\u201d to 62 countries, from Afghanistan to Yemen, and weapons platforms ranging from F-15, F-16, and F-18 combat jets to M1 Abrams main battle tanks to Cobra attack helicopters (sent to our Pakistani comrades) to guided missiles in all flavors, colors, and sizes: AAMs, PGMs, SAMs, TOWs \u2014 a veritable alphabet soup of missile acronyms. Never mind their specific meaning: they\u2019re all designed to blow things up; they\u2019re all designed to kill.<\/p>\n

Rarely debated in Congress or in U.S. media outlets is the wisdom or morality of these arms deals. During the quiet last days of December 2011, in separate announcements whose timing could not have been accidental, the Obama Administration expressed its intent to sell\u00a0nearly $11 billion in arms<\/a>\u00a0to Iraq, including Abrams tanks and F-16 fighter-bombers, and\u00a0nearly $30 billion in F-15 fighter jets<\/a>\u00a0to Saudi Arabia, part of a larger, $60 billion arms package for the Saudis. Few in Congress oppose such arms deals since defense contractors provide jobs in their districts \u2014 and\u00a0ready donations<\/a>\u00a0to Congressional campaigns.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s pause to consider what such a weapons deal implies for Iraq. Firstly, Iraq only \u201cneeds\u201d advanced tanks and fighter jets because we destroyed their previous generation of the same, whether in 1991 during Desert Shield\/Storm or in 2003 during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Secondly, Iraq \u201cneeds\u201d such powerful conventional weaponry ostensibly to deter an invasion by Iran, yet the current government in Baghdad is closely aligned with Iran, courtesy of our invasion in 2003 and the botched occupation that followed. Thirdly, despite its \u201cneeds,\u201d the Iraqi military is nowhere near ready to field and maintain such advanced weaponry, at least without sustained training and logistical support provided by the U.S. military.<\/p>\n

As one U.S. Air Force officer who served as an advisor to the fledging Iraqi Air Force, or IqAF, recently worried:<\/p>\n

\u201cWill the IqAF be able to refuel its own aircraft? Can the Iraqi military offer adequate force protection and security for its bases? Can the IqAF provide airfield management services at its bases as they return to Iraqi control after eight years under US direction? Can the IqAF ensure simple power generation to keep facilities operating? Will the IqAF be able to develop and retain its airmen?\u2026 Only time will tell if we left [Iraq] too early; nevertheless, even without a renewed security agreement, the USAF can continue to stand alongside the IqAF.\u201d<\/p>\n

Put bluntly: We doubt the Iraqis are ready to field and fly American-built F-16s, but we\u2019re going to sell them to them anyway. And if past history is a guide, if the Iraqis ever turn these planes against us, we\u2019ll blow them up or shoot them down \u2014 and then (hopefully) sell them some more.<\/p>\n

Our Best Arms Customer<\/strong><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s face it: the weapons we sell to others pale in comparison to the weapons we sell to ourselves. In the market for deadly weapons, we are our own best customer. Americans have a love affair with them, the more high-tech and expensive, the better. I should know. After all, I\u2019m a recovering weapons addict.<\/p>\n

Well into my teen years, I was fascinated by military hardware. I built models of what were then the latest U.S. warplanes: the A-10, the F-4, the F-14, -15, and -16, the B-1, and many others. I read\u00a0Aviation Week and Space Technology<\/em>\u00a0at my local library to keep track of the newest developments in military technology. Not surprisingly, perhaps, I went on to major in mechanical engineering in college and entered the Air Force as a developmental engineer.<\/p>\n

Enamored as I was by roaring afterburners and sleek weaponry, I also began to read books like\u00a0James Fallows\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0National Defense<\/em>\u00a0(1981) among other early critiques of the Carter and Reagan defense buildup, as well as the slyly subversive and always insightful\u00a0Augustine\u2019s Laws<\/em>\u00a0(1986) by\u00a0Norman Augustine<\/a>, later the CEO of Martin Marietta and Lockheed Martin. That and my own experience in the Air Force alerted me to the billions of dollars we were devoting to high-tech weaponry with ever-ballooning price tags but questionable utility.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the best example of the persistence of this phenomenon is the\u00a0F-35 Lightning II<\/a>. Produced by Lockheed Martin, the F-35 was intended to be an \u201caffordable\u201d fighter-bomber (at roughly $50 million per copy), a perfect complement to the much more expensive F-22 \u201cair superiority\u201d Raptor. But the usual delays, cost overruns, technical glitches, and changes in requirements have driven the price tag of the F-35 up to $160 million per plane, assuming the U.S. military persists in its plans to buy 2,400 of them. (If the Pentagon decides to buy fewer, the cost-per-plane will soar into the F-22 range.) By recent estimates the F-35 will now cost U.S. taxpayers (you and me, that is)\u00a0at least $382 billion<\/a>\u00a0for its development and production run. Such a sum for a single weapons system is vast enough to be hard to fathom. It would, for instance, easily fund all\u00a0federal government spending on education<\/a>\u00a0for the next five years.<\/p>\n

The escalating cost of the F-35 recalls the most famous of Norman Augustine\u2019s irreverent laws: \u201cIn the year 2054,\u201d he wrote back in the early 1980s, \u201cthe entire defense budget will [suffice to] purchase just one aircraft.\u201d But the deeper question is whether our military even\u00a0needs<\/em>\u00a0the F-35, a question that\u2019s rarely asked and never seriously entertained, at least by Congress, whose philosophy on weaponry is much like King Lear\u2019s: \u201cO, reason not the need.\u201d<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s reason the need in purely military terms. These days, the Air Force is turning increasingly to\u00a0unmanned drones<\/a>. Meanwhile, plenty of perfectly good and serviceable \u201cplatforms\u201d remain for attack and close air support missions, from F-16s and F-18s in the Air Force and Navy to Apache helicopters in the Army. And while many of our existing combat jets may be nearing the limits of airframe integrity, there\u2019s nothing stopping the U.S. military from producing updated versions of the same. Heck, this is precisely what we\u2019re hawking to the Saudis \u2014 updated versions of the F-15, developed in the 1970s.<\/p>\n

Because of sheer cost, it\u2019s likely we\u2019ll buy fewer F-35s than our military wants but many more than we actually need. We\u2019ll do so because Weapons \u2018R\u2019 Us. Because building ultra-expensive combat jets is one of the few high-tech industries we haven\u2019t exported (due to national security and secrecy concerns), and thus one of the few industries in the U.S. that still supports high-paying manufacturing jobs with decent employee benefits. And who can argue with that?<\/p>\n

The Ultimate Cost of Our Merchandise of Death<\/strong><\/p>\n

Clearly, the U.S. has grabbed the brass ring of the global arms trade. When it comes to investing in militaries and weaponry, no country can match us. We are supreme. And despite talk of modest cuts to the Pentagon budget over the next decade, it will,\u00a0according to<\/a>\u00a0President Obama, continue to grow, which means that in weapons terms the future remains bright. After all, Pentagon spending on research and development stands at $81.4 billion, accounting for an\u00a0astonishing 55%<\/a>\u00a0of all federal spending on R&D and leaving plenty of opportunity to develop our next generation of\u00a0wonder weapons<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But at what cost to ourselves and the rest of the world? We\u2019ve become the suppliers of weaponry to the planet\u2019s hotspots. And those weapons deliveries (and the training and support missions that go with them) tend to make those spots hotter still \u2014 as in hot lead.<\/p>\n

As a country, we seem to have a teenager\u2019s fascination with military hardware, an addiction that\u2019s driving us to bust our own national budgetary allowance. At the same time, we sell weapons the way teenage punks sell fireworks to younger kids: for profit and with little regard for how they might be used.<\/p>\n

Sixty years ago, it\u00a0was said<\/a>\u00a0that what\u2019s good for General Motors is good for America. In 1955, as Bob Seger sang, we were young and strong and makin\u2019 Thunderbirds. But today we\u2019re playing a new tune with new lyrics: what\u2019s good for Lockheed Martin or Boeing or [insert major-defense-contractor-of-your-choice here] is good for America.<\/p>\n

How far we\u2019ve come since the 1950s!<\/p>\n

This piece first appeared on TomDispatch<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

The post Weapons \u2018R\u2019 Us<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Perhaps you\u2019ve heard of\u00a0\u201cMakin\u2019 Thunderbirds,\u201d\u00a0a hard-bitten rock & roll song by Bob Seger that I listened to 30 years ago while in college. It\u2019s about auto workers back in 1955 who were \u201cyoung and proud\u201d to be making Ford Thunderbirds. But in the early 1980s, Seger sings, \u201cthe plants have changed and you\u2019re lucky if More<\/a><\/p>\n

The post Weapons \u2018R\u2019 Us<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":696,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1322135"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/696"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1322135"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1322135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1322138,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1322135\/revisions\/1322138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1322135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1322135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1322135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}