A Constant Reminder to a Constant War: Militarism in American Society
The incorporation of militarism into American society is staggering. From the onset of the post-war era, civilian life was forever transformed and molded to meet the growing demands of the military-industrial complex [...]
The wars in the Middle East continue to rage unabated. Over the weekend a Russian war plane was struck down by an Al Qaeda affiliated group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and once again stoked fears of widening the struggle in Syria between US and Russian proxy forces. It is yet another reminder of the ongoing and seemingly endless wars being waged in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere around the globe.
Our transition into this never-ending war paradigm, fashioned out of the events of the post 9/11 era, seeks only to benefit and further cement the pre-existing alliance between the US military and the proliferating arms industries; collectively known as the military industrial complex. This partnership represents the systematic convergence of the capitalist system and the modern American military establishment that was formed after the world conflicts of the first half the 20th century.
Ironically enough – one of the greatest leaders to emerge out of the American military institution was also one of its greatest critics. That of the former Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces during World War II and later President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower.
President Eisenhower’s farewell address in January 1961 first propagated the dire warning of the ills of the military industrial complex. In his address, Eisenhower indicated that due to the continuous nature of world conflicts and America’s participation therein, the US government had “been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry” resulting in more expenditure on “military security than the net income of all US corporations.” [1]
This notion of a permanent armaments industry was at the time new to the American experience. Eisenhower was in an unique position to not only witness its creation during the militarization period of World War II, but also to observe its everlasting foundation during the advent of the Cold War. Tensions between the US and the Soviet Union produced a decades long arms race unprecedented in the history of the world. During this time the convergence between the military establishment and the armaments industry changed the very facet of American society and imbued the nation in an insatiable fixation on war.
The collapse of the Soviet Union did very little to stem the tide of militarization as new wars in the 21st century reasserted the need to increase defense spending. Between 2002-2011, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, sales among the top 100 arms companies grew by 51%.[2] Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Raytheon, the worlds top three arms manufacturers in respect to net worth, had a combined annual revenue of over $95 billion USD in 2014 alone.[3]
Eisenhower fretted over the “unwarranted influence” potentially garnered by the military industrial complex leading to a disastrous path of “misplaced power” in the councils of government. This is explicitly evident in the intimate business dealings between the US Department of Defense (DoD) and the largest arms manufacturer, Lockheed Martin. By far its principal customer, US government military expenditures account for 60% of the $45Bn USD revenue it receives in a year.[4] Lockheed Martin’s contracts and influence within the US government is certainly perpetuated by its extensive lobbying, amounting to $241,738,668 USD between 1998-2017; according to opensecrets.org.[5]
As Eisenhower no doubtfully realized, America’s relationship with war making allowed it to better pursue its political and military objectives abroad in tandem to realizing its economic agenda at home. He spoke of the “prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by federal employment” along with the influence of money “to be gravely regarded.”[6] With America’s ever expanding military role, it comes to no surprise that the DoD became one of the country’s largest employer with nearly two million personnel.[7] Lockheed Martin, according to their official site, has either core factories or one of its many subsidiary companies in all 50 US states while touting to employ 115,000 people.[8] The so called “revolving door” phenomena, where government and private employment mix is also a deeply ingrained ritual. An article released by the Huffington Post in 2012 stated that upwards to 70% of retired US generals enter into contracts with arms manufacturers or defense related consultancies.[9]
Advances in technology also play a pivotal role in the sweeping changes in America’s industrial-military posture. Recent developments in aerodynamics, chip processing speed, automation, AI and machine learning along with expansions in telecommunications and the internet are spurred by massive R&D investments by the military establishment. The defense advance research projects agency or DARPA is one of the leading research institutes in the world and comprises renowned academics, private and governmental partners. Its sole mission is to “make pivotal investments in breakthrough technologies for national security.”[10] DARPA’s advances are often kept secret and its intentions are frequently debated by the public at large.
The incorporation of militarism into American society is staggering. From the onset of the post-war era, civilian life was forever transformed and molded to meet the growing demands of the military-industrial complex. Its take over was systematic yet subtle, hidden behind the veil of democracy and American exceptionalism. Whether or not the state’s hijacking by the military establishment was deliberate or just a manifestation of empire building, the results become the same; a captive public policy by scientific-technological elites.
According to Eisenhower, “Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”[11]
In a world fraught with uncertainty – a constant reminder is needed for a society in constant war.
Notes:
[1] Eisenhower, Dwight. Farewell Radio and Television Address to the American People, January 17th 1961. Speech transcript. https://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/all_about_ike/speeches/farewell_address.pdf
[2] Weigley, Samuel. 10 Companies Profiting Most from the War. USA Today. March 10th 2013, updated March 10th 2013 https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/03/10/10-companies-profiting-most-from-war/1970997/
[3] Pai, Priyanka. Top 10 Largest Weapons Manufacturing Companies in the World. Tharawat Magazine. July 14th, 2015. https://www.tharawat-magazine.com/facts/top-10-largest-weapons-manufacturing-companies/#gs.Boff2MI
[5] Top Spenders. Open Secrets, Center for Responsive Politics. https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?showYear=a&indexType=s
[6] Eisenhower, Dwight. Farewell Radio and Television Address to the American People, January 17th 1961. Speech transcript. https://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/all_about_ike/speeches/farewell_address.pdf
[7] United States Department of Defense (Official Website). Modified January 27th,2017. https://www.defense.gov/About/
[8] Who We Are. Lockheed Martin Official Website. https://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/who-we-are.html
[9] Johnson, Luke. Report: 70% of Retired Generals Took Jobs with Defense Contractors or Consultancies. Huffington Post. November 19th, 2012. Last updated November 20th, 2012. http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/defense-contractors-generals_n_2160771
[10] About DARPA. DARPA Official Webpage. https://www.darpa.mil/about-us/about-darpa
[11] Eisenhower, Dwight. Farewell Radio and Television Address to the American People, January 17th, 1961. Speech transcript. https://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/all_about_ike/speeches/farewell_address.pdf
Originally published on 2018-02-10
About the author: Andre Bermont is the Editor-in-Chief for cuibononews.com, news aggregation, and content website.
We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics, and international relations.
“malè ou swete bèlmè, se manman ou li frape” – the evil you wish upon your mother-in-law strikes your mother, Haitian wisdomThe other day, I saw a video excerpt of an October 2012 speech in which Bill Clinton was telling an audience in New-York how his wife, Hillary, possesses the extraordinary psychic ability to speak regularly with the dead, in particular, with the spirit of former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.*Today, some U.S. citizens who are still stunned by the election of Donald Trump may be seeking extra insights to help answer many troubling questions. However, I doubt the dead are in any way equipped to help them understand what is happening in the so-called “land of the free and home ...
The New York Times reported on October 22 that the United States has “just over 240,000 active-duty and reserve troops in at least 172 countries and territories,” which is a staggering total. But in an intriguing revelation the Times reported that there are a further 37,813 troops deployed “on presumably secret assignment in places listed simply as ‘unknown.’ The Pentagon provided no further explanation.”It is not surprising that Washington’s war-spreaders do not supply information to the American public concerning the location of soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen involved in clandestine operations around the globe, because this might bring to light the lack of justification for ...
Caroline Elkins’ accounts of British soldiers ramming broken bottles into the vaginas of female Kenyan prisoners during the Kikuyus’ Mau Mau revolt is not, by any stretch, the worst example of Albion’s imperial violence she recounts. Because this 870 page book is awash with similar instances of systematic war crimes by the British administration in Kenya, in Nigeria, Jamaica, South Africa, Malaya, Palestine, Cyprus, Nyasaland, India and countless other outposts of empire, justifiable comparisons between the British and the Nazis arise time and again.And, although many Nazis were brought to book for their crimes, no British were, even though General ...
The conflicts that engulfed the former Yugoslavia still remain unresolved in the political arena and open to Western political shenanigans and covert meddling from Turkey and Saudi Arabia in Bosnia and Kosovo. Orthodox Christianity faces many attacks and only a naïve individual would claim that America and the hands of Turkey and Saudi Arabia are clean.Central Bosnia in 2016: Flags of the ISISAmerica and other Western nations did little to stop Turkey invading Cyprus in 1974 and creating a de-facto nation and altering the demographics of northern Cyprus and using this area for military purposes.Irrespective of the rights and wrongs ...
The United States and its NATO allies launched a military intervention in 1999 that helped the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) win its secessionist campaign against Serbia. U.S. officials justified that intervention on the grounds that Serbian security forces were committing pervasive war crimes against the Kosovar insurgents. American supporters of the KLA also asserted that the secessionists were staunch Western‐style democrats mounting a noble resistance against Slobodan Milosevic’s corrupt, brutal regime, and that America had a moral obligation to support them. Speaking at a pro‐Kosovo march in Washington D. C., Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) stated that the “United States of America and the Kosovo ...
In the night of July 16-17, 1918, a squad of Bolshevik secret police murdered Russia's last emperor, Tsar Nicholas II, along with his wife, Tsaritsa Alexandra, their 14-year-old son, Tsarevich Alexis, and their four daughters. They were cut down in a hail of gunfire in a half-cellar room of the house in Ekaterinburg, a city in the Ural mountain region, where they were being held prisoner. The daughters were finished off with bayonets. To prevent a cult for the dead Tsar, the bodies were carted away to the countryside and hastily buried in a secret grave.Bolshevik authorities at first reported ...
For decades, consumers of the US media have been fed a series of repeated lies concerning the status of northern Korea. Tales of mass starvation and brutal torture are told over and over, occasionally updated but essentially the same as those told when Washington first realized it could not defeat the national forces headquartered in Pyongyang.Naturally, these stories become more frequent and considerably more dramatic during those times the US military heightens tensions in the region. While some of these “reports” are probably based in fact, the more revealing aspect of their being told is the lack of context involved in their ...
Genocide accusations are, it would seem, the latest fashion spreading out of the Balkans. On December 5, a former minister in the “government” of NATO occupied and administered Kosovo, Ivan Todosijević, who happens to be an otherwise occupation friendly and cooperative ethnic Serb, was sentenced to a two-year prison term. The court found him guilty of making what it considered the outrageous claim that the so-called genocidal “Račak massacre,” which in 1999 triggered NATO aggression against Yugoslavia, was an imposture. Since the trial began just two days before, by Balkan standards the swiftly reached verdict was remarkably expeditious, suggesting the ...
French president Macron’s call for the creation of a “European Army” and the implicit end of NATO alliance reflects the changing global order, the credit for which must, in the first place, go to the US president Trump, who, through his series of actions, has unwittingly done enough damage to the alliance to force the EU to wean away from the so-called western alliance and project itself as an independent player in the international arena. On the one hand, the concept of a “European army” affirms the growing distance between the US and its allies in Europe, and on the ...
The weapons are foreign, the fighters are foreign, the agenda is foreign. As Syrian forces fight to wrest control of their country back and restore order within their borders, the myth of the “Syrian civil war” continues on. Undoubtedly there are Syrians who oppose the Syrian government and even Syrians who have taken up arms against the government and in turn, against the Syrian people, but from the beginning (in fact before the beginning) this war has been driven from abroad. Calling it a “civil war” is a misnomer as much as calling those taking up arms “opposition.” It is not ...
“In the event of a nuclear war, there will be no chances, there will be no survivors – all will be obliterated… nuclear devastation is not science fiction – it is a matter of fact. The world now stands on the brink of the final abyss. Let us all resolve to take all possible practical steps to ensure that we do not, through our own folly, go over the edge.” Former First Sea Lord, Lord Louis Mountbatten (1900-1979) Strasbourg, 11 May 1979.”As US threats ratchet up towards North Korea, the latest hinging on the accusation that the country attempted a ...
For a long time, the bipartisan political system was the backbone of American democracy. Thanks to freedom of speech, the media, and open hearings in the US Congress, the opposition was always able to control the party in power. However, it took just a few years of active work and a year of mass-scale, illegal protests for this system to fall apart, and the thinking of many Americans to change so dramatically as to support this new reality. Ira Glasser, a veteran public figure and the longtime leader of the American Civil Liberties Union, became one of the first to ...
The US media has done it again. In a breaking news story on Fox News on Friday, September 28, 2007, Fox reporter Catherine Herridge used the term “former Yugoslavia” twice in the Fox story “Terrorist 007”. The term Yugoslavia was used deliberately to conceal the fact that the Al Qaeda terrorist known as Terrorist 007, or Irhabi 007 in Arabic, Younes Tsouli, had ties to Bosnia and to Bosnian Muslims who planned terrorist attacks.Fox News sought to conceal this Al Qaeda connection to Bosnia by using the term “former Yugoslavia” in place of “Bosnia”. This was deliberate and planned. Someone ...
As the contemporary Corona virus hysteria narrative continues to collapse (here and here) another dubious narrative, launched a quarter of a century ago – Srebrenica genocide – comes to mind. The common thread of both narratives is that they have just enough genuine elements to provide a seemingly plausible foundation for a vastly exaggerated tale. The Covid-19 virus can endanger health, and even be lethal, to certain classes of the population, but how much more than that is it? In Srebrenica in July of 1995, about a thousand Muslim prisoners were executed by a rogue outfit of the Serb army. ...
"If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible…”Harry S. Truman, 33rd POTUS, 1941Since the end of the Second World War, the bourgeois historiography has tried to distort various incidents in order to vilify Socialism and the USSR. One of these incidents- which has been a “banner” of imperialism’s apologists and other anticommunists- is the so-called “Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact“* which was signed in 1939. In it’s unscientific, unhistorical effort to equate Communism with Nazism, the bourgeois propaganda presents ...
The term “security” is a very multifaceted one. But today’s geopolitical situation forces us to think about its military aspect above all.Our attention is completely absorbed by news about wars, conflicts, military exercises and increasing defence capabilities. An average European reader has no chances to skip this kind of news while looking through news feeds of popular media.Even planned further militarization of the European region and Russia pose the real threat today. A whole generation of European children is growing in the firm belief that the war is approaching. We destroy ourselves by our fears. We notice everything concerning military ...
Saudi Prince Turki Al-Faisal speaking at the 2012 Clinton Global Initiative thanks former U.S. President Bill Clinton for “delivering Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo into Muslim hands and for near deliverance — within a hundred meters — of Palestine from occupation.”Originally published on 2012-11-15Author: Meira SvirskySource: Clarion ProjectOrigins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics ...
In 1999, when he was the President of Finland, Marti Ahtisaari’s government wanted to honor and to commemorate the 3,000 Finnish Nazi Waffen SS volunteers that served in Heinrich Himmler’s SS. Why would any government, indeed, why would anyone, want to honor and commemorate SS troops? Why would anyone want to honor and commemorate Nazis and Nazism? This is the question that has remained unanswered in the US and Western media about Marti Ahtisaari. As a sock puppet for the US, NATO, and EU, Ahtisaari’s role in honoring and commemorating the Nazi Waffen SS has been suppressed. As a Chairman ...
This article first published in March 2014 at the very outset of the Ukraine crisis explains the nature of the Kiev proxy regime. we are dealing with a Neo-Nazi government supported by “Western democracy” and the “international community”. According to the New York Times, “The United States and the European Union have embraced the revolution here as another flowering of democracy, a blow to authoritarianism and kleptocracy in the former Soviet space.” ( After Initial Triumph, Ukraine’s Leaders Face Battle for Credibility, NYTimes.com, March 1, 2014, emphasis added).“Flowering Democracy, Revolution”? The grim realities are otherwise. What is a stake is a ...
Last week’s announcement of a record-breaking US aid package for Israel underscores how dangerously foolish and out-of-touch is our interventionist foreign policy. Over the next ten years, the US taxpayer will be forced to give Israel some $38 billion dollars in military aid. It is money we cannot afford going to a country that needs no assistance to maintain its status as the most powerful military in the Middle East.All US foreign aid is immoral and counterproductive. As I have often said, it is money taken from poor people in the US and sent to rich people overseas. That is ...
Advances in technology also play a pivotal role in the sweeping changes in America’s industrial-military posture. Recent developments in aerodynamics, chip processing speed, automation, AI and machine learning along with expansions in telecommunications and the internet are spurred by massive R&D investments by the military establishment. The defense advance research projects agency or DARPA is one of the leading research institutes in the world and comprises renowned academics, private and governmental partners. Its sole mission is to “make pivotal investments in breakthrough technologies for national security.”[10] DARPA’s advances are often kept secret and its intentions are frequently debated by the public at large.
