Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Enron: "The smartest guys in the room"
The economic disaster that is military keynesianism: Why the US has really gone broke
from LeMonde Diplomatique
Global confidence in the US economy has reached zero, as was proved by last month's stock market meltdown. But there is an enormous anomaly in the US economy above and beyond the subprime mortgage crisis, the housing bubble and the prospect of recession: 60 years of misallocation of resources, and borrowings, to the establishment and maintenance of a military-industrial complex as the basis of the nation's economic life.
By Chalmers Johnson
The military adventurers in the Bush administration have much in common with the corporate leaders of the defunct energy company Enron. Both groups thought that they were the "smartest guys in the room" — the title of Alex Gibney's prize-winning film on what went wrong at Enron. The neoconservatives in the White House and the Pentagon outsmarted themselves. They failed even to address the problem of how to finance their schemes of imperialist wars and global domination.
As a result, going into 2008, the United States finds itself in the anomalous position of being unable to pay for its own elevated living standards or its wasteful, overly large military establishment. Its government no longer even attempts to reduce the ruinous expenses of maintaining huge standing armies, replacing the equipment that seven years of wars have destroyed or worn out, or preparing for a war in outer space against unknown adversaries. Instead, the Bush administration puts off these costs for future generations to pay or repudiate. This fiscal irresponsibility has been disguised through many manipulative financial schemes (causing poorer countries to lend us unprecedented sums of money), but the time of reckoning is fast approaching....
The top spenders
(The rest is here. Chalmers Johnson is the author of Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, Metropolitan, 2007. It is the final volume of his Blowback trilogy, which also includes Blowback, 2000, and The Sorrows of Empire, 2004.)
from LeMonde Diplomatique
Global confidence in the US economy has reached zero, as was proved by last month's stock market meltdown. But there is an enormous anomaly in the US economy above and beyond the subprime mortgage crisis, the housing bubble and the prospect of recession: 60 years of misallocation of resources, and borrowings, to the establishment and maintenance of a military-industrial complex as the basis of the nation's economic life.
By Chalmers Johnson
The military adventurers in the Bush administration have much in common with the corporate leaders of the defunct energy company Enron. Both groups thought that they were the "smartest guys in the room" — the title of Alex Gibney's prize-winning film on what went wrong at Enron. The neoconservatives in the White House and the Pentagon outsmarted themselves. They failed even to address the problem of how to finance their schemes of imperialist wars and global domination.
As a result, going into 2008, the United States finds itself in the anomalous position of being unable to pay for its own elevated living standards or its wasteful, overly large military establishment. Its government no longer even attempts to reduce the ruinous expenses of maintaining huge standing armies, replacing the equipment that seven years of wars have destroyed or worn out, or preparing for a war in outer space against unknown adversaries. Instead, the Bush administration puts off these costs for future generations to pay or repudiate. This fiscal irresponsibility has been disguised through many manipulative financial schemes (causing poorer countries to lend us unprecedented sums of money), but the time of reckoning is fast approaching....
The top spenders
The world’s top 10 military spenders and the approximate amounts each currently budgets for its military establishment are:
| Rank | Country | Military budget |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | United States (FY 2008 budget) | $623bn |
| 2. | China (2004) | $65bn |
| 3. | Russia | $50bn |
| 4. | France (2005) | $45bn |
| 5. | United Kingdom | $42.8bn |
| 6. | Japan (2007) | $41.75bn |
| 7. | Germany (2003) | $35.1bn |
| 8. | Italy (2003) | $28.2bn |
| 9. | South Korea (2003) | $21.1bn |
| 10. | India (2005 est.) | $19bn |
| World total military expenditures (2004 est) | $1,100bn | |
| World total (minus the US) | $500bn | |
(The rest is here. Chalmers Johnson is the author of Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, Metropolitan, 2007. It is the final volume of his Blowback trilogy, which also includes Blowback, 2000, and The Sorrows of Empire, 2004.)
Labels: blowback, Chalmers Johnson, military expenditures
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