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Count on one thing: a Congress that can agree on next to nothing Americans might actually want or need will undoubtedly usher through with all due speed President Biden's recent $33 billion request for arms and other aid for Ukraine. On that (and little else), Republicans and Democrats seem genuinely capable of agreement. Oh, and add that sum to last month's $14 billion aid package and Congress will have anted up an almost instant $47 billion for the Ukrainians in their battle with Vladimir Putin's desperately messed-up military that's already lost, it seems, at least 12 generals (thanks in part, ominously enough, to U.S. intelligence), a record for modern warfare).
I mean, we're talking about a Congress essentially incapable of passing legislation that would levy such sums for climate change, child care, or almost anything else that Americans might actually need here at home. But weapons for Ukraine? No big deal, any more than it was a problem when it came to funding this country's disastrous wars in Afghanistan or Iraq or its unending global war on terror or a Pentagon budget that contains almost unimaginable sums for America's giant weapons makers, whether what they're making works or not, is needed or not.
In other words, the horrifying war in Ukraine may be a catastrophe for the Ukrainians and, in the end, the Russians, too, but for the U.S. military-industrial complex it's clearly going to be a heaven on earth. You can already feel the thrill of it all in President Biden's pronouncements, in the urge of the secretary of defense to ensure that Russia is "weakened" big time by its invasion, and the commentary provided by Washington Republicans and Democrats alike. As retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and TomDispatch regular William Astore points out today, when it comes to war, the nightmare in Ukraine is proving to be a thrill and a half in Washington. After so many years of disfiguring military disaster globally, thanks to Vladimir Putin we're finally the undisputed good guys on planet Earth again and what more could you ask for? Tom
The Last Good Guys?
Five Reasons Why Washington Can't Break Its War Addiction
Why has the United States already become so heavily invested in the Russia-Ukraine war? And why has it so regularly gotten involved, in some fashion, in so many other wars on this planet since it invaded Afghanistan in 2001? Those with long memories might echo the conclusion reached more than a century ago by radical social critic Randolph Bourne that "war is the health of the state" or recall the ancient warnings of this country's founders like James Madison that democracy dies not in darkness, but in the ghastly light thrown by too many bombs bursting in air for far too long.
In 1985, when I first went on active duty in the U.S. Air Force, a conflict between the Soviet Union and Ukraine would, of course, have been treated as a civil war between Soviet republics. In the context of the Cold War, the U.S. certainly wouldn't have risked openly sending billions of dollars in weaponry directly to Ukraine to "weaken" Russia. Back then, such obvious interference in a conflict between the USSR and Ukraine would have simply been an act of war. (Of course, even more ominously, back then, Ukraine also had nuclear weapons on its soil.)
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, everything changed. The Soviet sphere of influence gradually became the U.S. and NATO sphere of influence. Nobody asked Russia whether it truly cared, since that country was in serious decline. Soon enough, even former Soviet republics on its doorstep became America's to meddle in and sell arms to, no matter the Russian warnings about "red lines" vis-Ã -vis inviting Ukraine to join NATO. And yet here we are, with an awful war in Ukraine on our hands, as this country leads the world in sending weapons to Ukraine, including Javelin and Stinger missiles and artillery, while promoting some form of future victory, however costly, for Ukrainians.
Here's what I wonder: Why in this century has America, the "leader of the free world" (as we used to say in the days of the first Cold War), also become the leader in promoting global warfare? And why don't more Americans see a contradiction in that reality? If you'll bear with me, I have what I think are at least five answers, however partial, to those questions:
* First and above all, war is even if so many Americans don't normally think of it that way immensely profitable. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the U.S. military-industrial complex recognized a giant business opportunity. During the Cold War, the world's biggest arms merchants were the U.S. and the USSR. With the Soviet Union gone, so, too, was America's main rival in selling arms everywhere. It was as if Jeff Bezos had witnessed the collapse of Walmart. Do you think he wouldn't have taken advantage of the resulting retail vacuum?
Forget about the "peace dividends" Americans were promised then or downsizing the Pentagon budget in a major way. It was time for the big arms manufacturers to expand into markets that had long been dominated by the USSR. Meanwhile, NATO chose to follow suit in its own fashion, expanding beyond the borders of a reunified Germany. Despite verbal promises to the contrary made to Soviet leaders like Mikhail Gorbachev, it expanded into Poland, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, and Romania, among other countries that is, to the very borders of Russia itself, even as U.S. weapons contractors made a killing in supplying arms to such new NATO members. In the spirit of management guru Stephen Covey, it may have been a purely "win-win" situation for NATO, the U.S., and its merchants of death then, but it's proven to be a distinctly lose-lose situation for Russia and now especially for Ukraine as the war there drags on and on, while the destruction only mounts.
* Second, when it comes to promoting war globally, consider the U.S. military's structure and mission. How could this country possibly return to anything like what, so long ago, was known as "isolationism" when it has at least 750 military bases scattered liberally on every continent except Antarctica? How could it not promote war in some fashion, when that unbelievably well-funded military's mission is defined as projecting power globally across all "spectrums" of combat, including land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace? What could you expect when its budget equals those of the next 11 militaries on this planet combined or when the Pentagon quite literally divides the whole world into U.S. military commands headed by four-star generals and admirals, each one a Roman-style proconsul? How could you not imagine that Washington's top officials believe this country has a stake in conflicts everywhere under such circumstances? Such attitudes are an obvious product of such a structure and such a sense of armed global mission.
* Third, consider the power of the dominant narrative in Washington in these years. Despite the never-ending war-footing of this country, Americans are generally sold on the idea that we constitute a high-minded nation desirous of peace. In a cartoonish fashion, we're always the good guys and enemies, like Putin's Russia now, uniquely evil. Conforming to and parroting this version of reality leads to career success, especially within the mainstream media. As Chris Hedges once so memorably put it: "The [U.S.] press goes limp in front of the military." And those with the spine to challenge such a militarist narrative are demoted, ostracized, exiled, or even in rare cases imprisoned. Just ask whistleblowers and journalists like Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange, Daniel Hale, and Edward Snowden who have dared to challenge the American war story and paid a price for it.
* Fourth, war both unifies and distracts. In this century, it has helped unify the American people, however briefly, as they were repeatedly reminded to "support our troops" as "heroes" in the fight against "global terror." At the same time, it's distracted us from the class war in this country, where the poor and working class (and, increasingly, a shrinking middle class as well) are most definitely losing out. As financier and billionaire Warren Buffett put the matter: "There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning."
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