AUT: Why A Cold War Budget?

[Scott Hamilton <s_h_hamilton@xxxxxxxxx>]

Here's a Guardian article on Bush's Reaganite budget
preceded by an excerpt from a statement on the War on
Terror written by an obscure American group and
published in the December/January issue of NZ's 'Class
Struggle' (see
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Rotunda/5050/classtruggle.html)
Does the analysis put forward in the excerpted
statement help explain Bush's budget, which seems to
have stumped many analysts?

SH

"Had the tragic events of 9/11 not occurred, those in
power would have had to find another pretext to
justify this imperialist war and its resulting attacks
on workers rights and living conditions both here and
abroad.

War makes good business sense

Why is this the case? The answer to this can only be
understood in the context of a possible worldwide
depression. This crisis first reared its head with the
collapse of the so-called "Asian Tigers" in 1997
(South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Thailand). To a
certain degree, the international consequences of it
were put off by the US absorbing imports from the
stricken regimes while driving up credit to record
amounts. However, these measures only deepened the
contradictions of the US' boom which was built on
quicksand and few saw if any benefits for the working
class. Now that the consequences of the capitalists'
policies are hitting the US economy in a big way, the
big business is being compelled into actions that,
while promising super profits for the rich, are a
disaster for everyone else.

This depression is essentially a crisis of
overproduction for the capitalists; that is, more
commodities have been made then can be sold at a
profit. Therefore, the capitalists must move their
investment capital into areas of production that will
not add to mountains of goods and services no one can
afford. What is more, they must do so in such a way as
to increase the exploitation of workers both in its
semi-colonial slave states and here at home. Military
investment is where capitalists are moving their
money. It's a government guaranteed purchase (that is,
your tax dollars), and when weapons are being blown up
demand is created without adding to overproduction.
Considering that the stock market lost over a trillion
dollars in the week after 9/11 alone, there is going
to be a whole lot of weapons building and blowing up
to do."

Bush billions will revive cold war army

But defence experts say that will not help in the
fight against terror

Julian Borger in Washington
Wednesday February 6, 2002
The Guardian

The Bush administration attempted yesterday to justify
a stunning leap in spending on the military as defence
analysts criticised the budget for pumping money into
conventional weaponry inherited from the cold war era.

Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, defended the
the 11% increase in Pentagon expenditure yesterday,
telling the Senate armed services committee that it
was necessary to compensate for "a decade of overuse
and underfunding", and to prepare for future wars
beyond the current anti-terrorist campaign.

"When the cold war ended, a defence drawdown [cutback]
took place that went too far... overshot the mark,"
the defence secretary said. "Now, through the prism of
September 11, we can see that our challenge is not
simply to fix the underfunding of the past."

However, a breakdown of the budget figures suggests
that relatively little of the $379bn (£266bn) planned
spending for 2003 is directly relevant to the
requirements of combating shadowy terrorist groups
such as al-Qaida.

A far greater proportion of the defence budget will go
towards "big ticket" weapon systems designed for the
large-scale conventional battles envisaged during the
cold war. They had been facing the axe under the
"military transformation" initially planned by George
Bush and Mr Rumsfeld.

The sharp rise in defence spending proposed in
President Bush's budget marks a defeat for reformers
who had planned to transform the US military into a
lighter, more mobile and more efficient force. Among
the programmes to have survived widely expected cuts
are three separate tactical warplanes with overlapping
functions demanded by the armed forces: the navy's
super hornet, the air force's F- 22 raptor and the
joint strike fighter (JSF) intended for all the
services.

On the campaign trail, Mr Bush said the country could
not afford all three aircraft, but the budget
allocates $12bn to be spent on them in 2003. When the
JSF enters full production, it will cost twice as much
as the current workhorse, the F-16, with a total bill
of $200bn.

Another controversial weapon given a reprieve in
Monday's budget is the crusader artillery system, a
hefty mobile gun which critics said might have
performed well in big land battles against Soviet
tanks, but which is too heavy to be rapidly deployed
in far-flung corners of the globe.

Paul Krugman, a liberal economist, argued in
yesterday's New York Times: "The military build-up
seems to have little to do with the actual threat,
unless you think that al-Qaida's next move will be a
frontal assault by several heavy armoured divisions."

Loren Thompson, a senior analyst at the Lexington
Institute, an independent defence thinktank, said the
budget reflected "the staying power of a deeply
entrenched bureaucracy in terms of protecting
programmes it values".

Mr Rumsfeld and his chief strategic adviser, Andrew
Marshall, had hoped to accelerate the pace of military
reform, but even before September 11 they found
themselves blocked by the heads of the armed services
who refused to scrap established projects to make
money available for a new generation of weapons such
as the national missile defence (NMD) system, the B-2
stealth bomber and unmanned aircraft.

The terrorist attacks on New York and Washington -
combined with Mr Bush's declaration that the US was
threatened by an "axis of evil" consisting of Iraq,
Iran and North Korea - has created a political
atmosphere in which both sides in the debate can
pursue their strategies at the same time.

"Instead of wiping away previous priorities, Rumsfeld
has just added his projects on top of them," Mr
Thompson said.

As well as earmarking funds for the crusader, the
three tactical aircraft and a host of other
established projects, the budget sets aside $7.8bn for
NMD and $630m for more global hawk unmanned aircraft.

According to Steven Kosiak, an analyst at the Centre
for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, the total
2003 defence budget will be 11% higher than the
average military expenditure during the cold war. By
2007, under the Bush plan, defence spending will be
20% higher than average cold war levels.

"Some advocates of transformation are not going to be
happy," Mr Kosiak said. "It's partly because there is
so much money available the administration does not
have to make choices."

In the current political atmosphere, Congress is
unlikely to question the defence budget and may even
insist on boosting it further. Among the big winners
will be the defence contractors such as Lockheed
Martin, Boeing and United Defence, which makes the
crusader.

The majority stake in United Defence is owned by the
Carlyle Group, an investment company which employs
George Bush, the president's father, and the former
British prime minister John Major as lobbyists to open
doors in the US and abroad. The elder Mr Bush has
converted speaking fees into Carlyle stock, and stands
to benefit considerably from the crusader's reprieve.

Another significant consequence of the jump in US
defence spending, most defence experts agree, is the
further weakening of Nato.

In Kosovo and Afghanistan, America's Nato allies had
little to contribute to the hi-tech air war that was
the basis of US strategy. The Bush defence plan is
likely to widen the technological gap, reinforcing the
administration's ideological preference for
unilateralism.

What the money is being spent on

Missile defence
$7.8bn

Aircraft
Navy F/A-18E/F super hornet $3.3bn
Air force F-22 raptor $5.2 bn
F-35 joint strike fighter $3.5bn
Global hawk unmanned aircraft $630m

Artillery
Crusader artillery system $475m





=====
For "a ruthless criticism of every existing idea":
THR@LL, NZ's class struggle anarchist paper http://www.freespeech.org/thrall/
THIRD EYE, a Kiwi lib left project, at http://www.geocities.com/the_third_eye_website/
and 'REVOLUTION' magazine, a Frankfurt-Christchurch production, http://cantua.canterbury.ac.nz/%7Ejho32/

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