The Unwarranted Influence of America’s Global “Defense” Industry

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=51&ItemID=13799
Chronicling the Rise of US Government Dependence on Conflict

In analyzing President Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower’s keep-an-eye-on-the-defense-industry speech of January 1961 alongside bipartisan excuses for war in Iraq, only Eisenhower’s warnings stand up to current United States Department of Defense statistics.

Outsourcing trends, hugely accelerated in the 1990s, have made the Department of Defense the largest corporate entity in history. Few big corporations in the world don’t have a handy cash-cow D contract, and small businesses and schools are especially welcome to apply. ($900 per toilet seat? Let’s sell those!)

DoD contracts are dished out everyday for everything from children’s books, cosmetics, organic dinners, and movie theater tickets to good old-fashioned nano weaponry.

Hundreds of thousands of companies in 198 nations and territories hold prime contracts with DoD, including companies in China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Syria. (“Prime” doesn’t count contracted individuals and subcontracted companies.)

There were none in Iraq until 2003.

Defense is the world’s top user of fossil fuels, contributor to climate change, and most financially alluring industry, with the strongest lobby power in Washington and everywhere else. Defense is also the world’s foremost motivator of advanced science and technology, a global network capable of an entirely new direction in economics—dependent, of course, on whether it’s a good D policy or a bad D policy.

That’s where We the People come in, at least according to President Eisenhower, who particularly worried about our universities.

Said Ike: “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. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.”

Judging by DoD’s own stats, we’re way past that point. More than 1,100 colleges and universities have had prime contracts with the Department of Defense in the last six years. Around 950 of those are in the United States, with the rest spread across 33 countries.

Although the number of DoD general assistance contracts to schools remained relatively constant between 2000 and 2006, the 900% increase in defense-applied research contracts and total dollar amounts awarded to schools during that period would’ve made Ike toss his lunch on TV. The total number of defense-applied research contracts to schools rose from 5,887 in 2000 to 52,667 in 2006. Total dollars to schools rose from $4.4 billion in 2000 to $46.7 billion in 2006.

DoD contract trends are at all-time highs, with more than 300,000 prime contractors in the United States alone; a 6,000 companies-per-state average. (Additionally, there are hundreds of thousands of subcontracted companies and individuals.) Between 2001 and 2006, the total amount of defense dollars for prime contractors in most states doubled. For fiscal year 2001, companies in Texas received $9.5 billion. For fiscal year 2006, the total was $27 billion.

Between the end of World War II and December 2006, US armed forces served abroad in 159 instances. These military operations increased each decade, with 6 in the 1950s, 8 in the 60s, 11 in the 70s, 22 in the 80s, 66 in the 90s, and 44 so far this decade.

Campaigns run on strong defense for a reason: Defense is by far the largest job creator and money spender, and the dispersal of contracts to an ever-growing variety of companies in the 50 states and beyond continuously motivates representatives to approve defense-spending increases.

A bad defense policy takes the people’s taxes then leaves them out of the loop, gives businesses the taxes to invest in their financial growth and spreads weaponry and tensions worldwide. We pay defense, defense showers that money on schools and companies, and top executives buy yachts and build stadiums. State and local leaders then raise taxes to cover what taxes should cover: the people’s health and prosperity.

A bad defense policy also means presidential candidates who don’t promise increased defense spending have little or no chance of equal coverage in any party, thanks to Big Media’s industrial role and Big Money’s role in politics.

Good folks put their faith, families, careers, and lives on the line for what they’re told by government. They don’t have time to investigate what drives it. Every September 11 America’s leadership bows its collective head before reminding people to keep shopping in “the wealthiest nation” while its infrastructure crumbles. This year the most-evil enemy told us to think about that. With a graduate program untangling defense statistics, it did make me wonder: which “side” in this supposedly black and white world has the most evil to hide?

Also this September 11, MSNBC aired a commercial-filled two-hour replay of NBC’s broadcast of the 2001 event, in which a news anchor said, “(Bin Laden) is in Afghanistan.” Disturbingly, the replay broke for a live news update, in which a news anchor said, “President Bush will address the nation on the war in Iraq this week.”

So much for Afghanistan.

It would better serve the people to hear Eisenhower’s speech every year instead of hollow tales about a bad guy leaders tell us to fear yet, convenient for their personal-wealth club, apparently don’t see fit to chase down. Exploiting September 11 for profit has (among other things) legitimized the largest-ever expansion of the military industry using a nation that had nothing to do with it. That perpetuation indeed smells like bipartisan imperialism.

Whether you’re a student or selling ice cream, teddy bears, tennis balls, shovels, or oil rigs, chances are you’re connected to the defense industry. We join the club with our taxes. Worse, overall trends show that in this age of confrontation with Earth’s definition of diversity, truly hard-working diverse Americans—workers, students, parents, soldiers—are harnessed with a national brand of business-friendly diversity that makes them equal low-income slaves to an old-fashioned, wealthy white man’s profit scheme. Ike called it unwarranted influence. Our founders called it tyranny.

Diversity is an awareness of the human family returning to unity after a long and tortuous journey, celebrating its products of division while embracing its single origin and destiny. The next logical step for humanity is a leap beyond human-centric diversity to perceiving and promoting the human family as a fully responsible component of biodiversity.

As Ike feared, economic dependence on defense growth by the perpetuation of tensions since World War II helps explain the existence of nearly every problem we face today. Undoubtedly, he would agree that economic dependence on defending Earth’s essential diversity is a far more healthy, lucrative, and lasting prospect.

Our taxes pay for a defense that doesn’t defend our future. Our taxes go to companies that make profits we will never see. The real threat President Eisenhower spoke of is a drug that poisons society, spreads like a virus, and numbs the roots of consciousness. The American dream has become a nightmare wherein justice is irrelevant and dishonest leaders both shun and cite hard, courageous work.

The defense industry juggernaut is not a widespread corporate conspiracy; it’s a bad-policy business trend running on inertia. Instead of calling for contractors to give up their profits—an unlikely scenario—the people have the power to demand a good defense policy that invests the vast network in a healthy planet.

Peace will not make money until it becomes the policy for defense, and that won’t happen without a tax rebellion, general strike, or similar surge in popular demand. (1,100 schools sounds like a student movement network.) Until the day we have a good D, the bad D pays our leaders. The people’s business is making that day arrive, because lazy government won’t surrender without a confrontation with the governed.

Meanwhile, “we must stop the terrorists in Iraq!” Terrorists, communists, whatever. Business-wise, Vietnam never ends.

That’s where we are.

At a 1992 University of Oregon event discussing the American people and their government, author Ken Kesey declared, “There are times when you gotta stand up in church and shout ‘bullshit!’”

That’s what time it is.



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(Sources: Statistical Information Analysis Division, Department of Defense; FY2000 through FY2006 CASE Multi-year Educational Nonprofits Prime Contracts, ST25 Multi-year States and Territories Prime Contracts, ST26 Multi-year Foreign Country Prime Contracts; and “Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2006,” updated January 8, 2007 by Richard F. Grimmett, Specialist in National Defense, US Congressional Research Service.)

Brian Bogart is a peace studies graduate student, diversity scholar, and defense statistics analyst at University of Oregon. His thesis project follows the 60-year trend of acquiring what President Dwight Eisenhower termed the “unwarranted influence” of the defense industry by government. Sources at IntelligentFuture.org
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=51&ItemID=13799