The powerful military-industrial complex, with generous campaign contributions funneled via K-Street lobbyists to both parties, celebrated a huge victory yesterday. By getting overwhelming majorities in both chambers to approve a whopping, unprecedented $856 billion Pentagon bill, America's defense industries are assured of continued prosperity for years to come. Pentagon budgets are rarely cut year after year and generally only rise with time.
The amount was $45 billion more than what President Biden, a huge spendthrift who loves deficit expenditures, requested. The war in Ukraine and tensions in the Taiwan Strait were used as justification for the massive bill. Never mind that neither issue was on Congressional minds a year ago or need have been today had the State Department resorted to diplomacy rather than promoting war.
Diplomacy costs cents on the dollar and, when done right, saves lives and limbs. When President Trump was in office, Ukraine was in the news only because the Democrats impeached him over a phone call. Otherwise, most Americans would’ve needed help to place Ukraine on a map. Not a single Russian bullet was fired in Ukraine during his term. Most people were unaware of China-Taiwan challenges, too, until Nancy Pelosi decided to visit Taipei, needlessly upsetting the status quo.
But America's colossal defense and reconstruction industry gains nothing when diplomacy works. Companies in this sector benefit when there is a war to which America is fully committed. The longer the fight goes, and the more destruction, the better. There is real money to be made when America helps a nation to rebuild.
A report from the Costs of War project at Brown University showed that 20 years of post-9/11 wars cost the U.S. an estimated $8 trillion and killed more than 900,000 people. Pentagon spending during this period totaled over $14 trillion, with one-third to one-half of the total going to military contractors. A large portion of these contracts -- one-quarter to one-third of all Pentagon contracts in recent years -- went to just five major corporations: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman. War and reconstruction are incredibly profitable businesses.
Current estimates are that it will take $750 billion and ten years to rebuild Ukraine. In April, the World Bank's assessment was just $70 billion, not a tiny figure, but a bargain if the administration had pushed diplomacy instead of war.
As we noted in July, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, the remainder of his J.V. foreign policy team of Antony Blinken, and Victoria Nuland, all former lobbyists themselves, drove the United States to war under the excuse of defending the "rules-based international order" to protect a sovereign state's territorial integrity. The war's effects have spread worldwide as America weaponizes and trains Ukraine. When it is time to rebuild Ukraine, and if history is suggestive, assume at least 80% of that $750 billion burden - a whopping $600 billion - all cash, all borrowed, given that America is running a $1.38 trillion federal deficit, will fall as obligations on the American taxpayer.
It's just not the large military contractors that will benefit from rebuilding in Ukraine. Lobbyists and consulting firms on the civilian side will also attempt to shape the reconstruction. Human Resources consultants will try to rewrite Ukrainian labor policies to mimic the West concerning union-standard pay, benefits, and collective bargaining rights. The environmental lobby will actively influence Ukraine to adopt the equivalent of a Green New Deal. The American taxpayer will bear these expenses to structure a different nation.
Activists are already preparing for this upcoming war to rebuild Ukraine to their tastes. Speaking to the New York Times, Joseph Stiglitz, an economist at Columbia University and a Nobel laureate, worried "that the kind of hands-off, neoliberal approach that has brought inequality, environmental degradation, and insufficient housing and medical care in the United States and other countries is being promoted as a model for Ukraine." Translation: America should invest in helping Ukraine become a socialist, Scandinavian-type democracy.
What is shocking to us is that President Biden crudely exited Afghanistan partly because the costs of reconstruction and maintenance were taxing Americans. "We no longer had a clear purpose in an open-ended mission in Afghanistan," Biden said. "After more than $2 trillion spent in Afghanistan, costs that Brown University researchers estimated would be over $300 million a day for 20 years — yes, the American people should hear this... what have we lost as a consequence, in terms of opportunities?"
Two months after this pronouncement, Antony Blinken signed a deal with Ukraine to offer security guarantees - against solid Russian objections. The rest is history.
https://tippinsights.com/the-nation-rebuilding-industry-salivates-over-ukraine/
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