President Bush launched the current wave of global war. President Obama expanded it. Under President Trump, war profiteers ran the Pentagon. Now, under President Biden, another war profiteer – General Lloyd Austin – runs the Pentagon, and the wars continue.
This is no fluke. “Harming other countries,” writes air force veteran Christian Sorensen for Business Insider, “is evidence of the military-industrial-congressional complex (MIC) functioning as designed — and it’s neither intended to, nor actually, improving American security.”
The Military Industrial Complex, best defined as an insulated network consisting of the US military establishment, the corporations that market and sell goods and services to the U.S. military and allied governments, and Capitol Hill, creates a permanent warfare state which helps cause our endless wars.
Few people inside the MIC recognize the gravity of the situation, Sorensen reports. But most fear the consequences of speaking up about how “funneling so much money toward the permanent warfare state actually harms U.S. security by draining manpower and time, distorting research and development, and forestalling social care.”
The corporations that make up the MIC inevitably look to expand their business and increase profit – and that doesn’t just involve building new factories to multiply revenues. It also means putting money towards funding and lobbying politicians who then advocate for war and broad military deployments. To make more money, corporations are now taking over numerous military functions, including propaganda and public relations; office work and program management; audit and finance; and training and simulation. “And corporations contracted for military jobs inevitably squeeze a layer of profit for their services,” Sorensen notes. “To obtain that, corporations end up over-charging, cutting jobs, polluting, and harming unions.”
The bottom line: when war is your business, peace is your enemy. “Military force becomes the go-to tool when approaching any group, issue, or conflict that could be handled diplomatically. The US military and intelligence agencies regularly inflate threats to justify massive budgets, invasive legal authorities, and bloated bureaucracy, while the war industry hypes threats to sell goods and services. Military intervention harms populations and destabilizes countries around the world, and ultimately produces more “enemies” to fight — thereby generating more profitable conflicts.”
The military industrial complex is producing warfare and immense suffering – and it’s working as designed. It postpones the only healthy path forward: “demilitarizing society and converting the war industry into the business of caring for humanity and the natural world.”
“That may be a long shot,” Sorensen concludes. “But our future depends on it.”
Read the full piece here.
When war is the business, peace is the enemy.
Christian Sorensen