BY DANNY FAIRFAX
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies a theft from those who hunger and are not fed; those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron."
These words come from an unlikely source: Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953, when he was US president. During the Cold War, Eisenhower oversaw the heating up of the nuclear arms race to near crisis-point, and unprecedented sums spent on the US military.
Eisenhower's rhetoric is as far from reflecting US government policy now as it was then. After the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s, US military expenditure did not decline significantly, although Russia's such expenditure reduced by 77%.
When Manhattan's twin towers collapsed in 2001, the owners and executives of arms companies began rubbing their hands with glee. They knew that the Bush administration would try to convert the resulting grief and anger into support for a permanent war â against the ephemeral bogey of "global terrorism" â resulting in a bonanza for the arms industry.
In the days following 9/11, while the share prices of most US corporations fell, those of weapons and military infrastructure manufacturers soared.
In the 21 months since then, Bush has increased the US military budget to US$396 billion, more than the combined expenditure of the next six largest military powers. Secretary of State Colin Powell has predicted that the War on Terror will last "longer than our lifetimes".
This war's most immediate losers are those living in countries branded by Washington as rogue states. They face the obliteration of their livelihoods, or even their lives, by the most powerful and technologically advanced war machine ever, whose budget is 30 times greater than that of all the rogue states combined.
Some of the war's biggest winners are arms merchants, such as the "Big Four": Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and TRW.
Lockheed Martin has recently been awarded a $67 billion contract to build F-22 fighter jets. At a cool $200 million each, they are the successor to the F-16.
All four corporations are involved in the controversial National Missile Defense scheme, first mooted nearly 20 years ago by then President Ronald Reagan, and more recently taken up with enthusiasm by US President George Bush.
This enormously expensive project to create a missile defence shield around the United States â $8-9 billion is spent annually just on research for it will do little other than accelerate the nuclear arms race and increase the arms merchants' profits.
The use of taxpayers' money to artificially expand the weapons' industry, is mitigating an even deeper economic recession than the one the US is already facing.
Ottawa University economics professor Michel Chossudovsky has outlined how the share market meltdown of the dot.coms since February 16, 2001, was alleviated by a surge in the share prices of weapons manufacturers â due to increased bombing of Baghdad that day. "Had the Bush administration decided otherwise, Lockheed Martin's listing on the New York Stock Exchange might well have experienced the same fate as that of Nortel."
This is no new phenomenon. The term "military-industrial complex" was coined around the time of the massive military build-up that preceded the carnage of World War II, which helped drag the US economy out of depression. The term summed up the idea that heavy military spending is a measure capitalism has frequently resorted to to artificially inject demand and activity into the economy.
Arms manufacturers can always reap big profits as long as governments are willing to continue spending vast sums on the military.
However, it can be hard to justify the huge outlays on military hardware when there is no credible threat. The War on Terror provides an excuse for attacking any nation or group which threatens US global interests â from Islamic fundamentalists to revolutionary Cuba.
The ones to profit? You guessed it, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and the other arms corporations.
Of course, Washington has more than one reason for its war drive: conquering new markets and strengthening its global hegemony among them. But the arms companies' profits is a strong motive â "defence" corporations outstrip even the tobacco industry in political donations.
It's not just US-led wars which these companies seek to make profits from. According to a congressional study, Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 68% of US-produced weapons are sold to the Third World. An integral part of this is sales to regimes with dubious records of human rights, including Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Kuwait, Turkmenistan and Turkey.
Arms corporations have been known to participate in provoking local arms races: for example, in 1999 Lockheed Martin sold 80 F-16s to the United Arab Emirates for US$8 billion. Within months, 50 jets had been sold to Israel, keen to maintain its regional air superiority.
The US taxpayer subsidises and promotes such exports at an annual cost of US$7 billion.
The effect can be devastating. One of the poorest countries in the world, with a per-capita income of around US$2500, Pakistan now has a fully fledged nuclear weapons program. Twenty per cent of the Pakistan government's pitiful budget goes to the military; and a further 40% goes to international debt repayments.
British Aerospace, which has a near monopoly on the British arms industry, achieved notoriety in the 1990s for its sales of Hawk aircraft to the Indonesian government. The Hawks were used in the suppression of the East Timorese and Acehnese independence struggles.
The Australian government does not stand aloof from this global trade in death. During the last decade, while government spending on education, health and community services has fallen, the defence budget has risen by close to 50%.
In the last financial year, it was $14.3 billion more than $1000 for every adult in this country. This is set to rise by another $2.4 billion a year by 2006.
About 20-30% of the military budget will be allocated to arms procurement from the former government-owned company Australian Defence Industries, which is now 50% owned by French arms producer Thales, as well as major firms from the US, Britain and elsewhere.
Between June 24 and June 26, the Australian government will be getting together with these death merchants at Defence and Industry 2003, in the National Convention Centre in Canberra. The annual arms and infrastructure conference, attended by 1500 delegates, arranges defence tendering and contracts, and discusses new technological advances in the art of killing people.
Many people are planning to protest outside this obscene spectacle.
The arms industry is one of the most monstrous manifestations of modern capitalism. Those who make profits from war are abhorred by the possibility of a peaceful and harmonious world, and will strive to destroy any possibility of it.
The irrationality of corporations profiting out of the death and destruction caused by war will not be solved until the economic system that demands irrational consumption is overturned.
[Danny Fairfax is a member of the socialist youth organisation Resistance.]
From Green Left Weekly, June 25, 2003.
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