STUMPTALK: The warfare/welfare state is forever

By Phillip J. Chesser / Chronicle contiributor

November 16, 2009 05:06 pm

— A regular contributor to these pages recently complained about the undue influence that President Eisenhower’s military industrial complex has upon American politics and the American economy. That Chronicle contributor describes things correctly (if not exactly in these words): defense contractors, national security intellectuals, generals, admirals, and others with national security credentials exert considerable (and to the writer unhealthy) political influence in the halls of Congress and at the White House even today with President Obama in the Oval Office.
Problem is, the writer is among those who favor big government and does not realize that if one likes big government, he or she must live with its excesses, that is, people must remember that when they give government the power to do good things, they also give it the power to do bad things, which, depending on one’s point of view, includes the maintenance of a large military establishment. That’s why the Founding Fathers created a Constitution to limit the power of government. They knew that, in the words of Lord Acton, power corrupts.
Almost every President from JFK to Barack Obama has been strongly influenced by Keynesian economics, which holds that big government spending for whatever purposes stimulates economic growth, which is a general good, and that government spending is especially important in times of economic contraction (like now). Spending for the Pentagon has therefore become the permanent stimulus plan.
Big government is a candy store for defense and non defense rent seekers, which are businesses who seek protection from the uncertainties of the market by finding shelter and profit in taxpayer financed business. Defense contractors are the most visible rent seekers but there are many others. For example, General Electric now backs green initiatives because they see an opportunity to make lots of money on taxpayer financed windmills, solar panels, and other green machines. Also, as recently described eloquently by my Stumptalk colleague Phil Billington, rent seeking health insurers seek regulatory protection from the market.
Like his predecessors, under the influence of defense establishment intellectuals, bureaucrats, and rent seekers, Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama, who gained national notice by opposing the war in Iraq, is poised to commit additional troops to Afghanistan (where some will be blown up by IEDs), a country that the British and the Soviets failed to subdue even with thousands of troops and superior weaponry. Were he truly for peace he would have already begun the process of disengagement from Afghanistan. Instead, he continues like JFK, LBJ, Nixon, and Bush 43 to waste human and material treasure in an area destined to become a Vietnam like quagmire. And most certainly after American troops withdraw from Iraq, the shameful spectacle of 1975 Vietnam will repeat itself.
Nor does President Obama clearly state the vital American interests in either Afghanistan or Iraq other than in vague support of the Bush war on terror, which appears to have been discredited, correctly I believe, in the recent national elections.
Sixty-four years after World War II and 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall the United States continues to maintain over a hundred military facilities and thousands of troops around the world. The nation also continues to support and even expand the Cold War relic NATO, which needlessly annoys the Russians while providing an international fig leaf for what are fundamentally U.S. commitments. And by the way, the United States is one of the five major arms suppliers to the world. The other four are the UK, France, China, and Russia, all of which are permanent members of the UN Security Council. Will the Peace Prize recipient do anything to change that?
In areas of national security President Obama has become President Bush with complete sentences, sans Texas swagger and neoconservative support. Hope and change to Obama Democrats means “I hope I get mine; don’t change anything.” As I said in the title, the warfare/welfare state is forever.