[PEN-L:4640] On Military Keynesianism

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Max wrote:

>6.  Military Keynesianism may have meant something back in the
>1950's, or in 1962 when defense/GDP was near ten percent.

It is next to impossible to figure out the real motives behind intervention
in the Balkans, since American foreign policy decisions are made in secret.
That was the reason the "Pentagon Papers" were such an eye-opener--they
revealed the real thinking rather than the rah-rah speeches for public
consumption. And that is what we are getting, after all--rah-rah speeches.
The notion that the US fights wars to stop ethnic cleansing or genocide is
an obscene joke. The US has been responsible for more such crimes than any
nation in modern history, including Nazi Germany. This nation was built on
ethnic cleansing and genocide. As far as the economics are concerned, wars
do not interact with a capitalist economy in a mechanical fashion. While we
tend to associate expansion with WWII and the Korean War, there are
counter-indications all through modern history. For example, Portugal's
colonial wars drained the country and created the objective conditions for
the left-wing military revolt of the 1970s. One of the most difficult
things in the world is figuring out the motivation of the Clinton
administration, which is less driven by ideology than any in history
perhaps. The Clinton White House is simply a direct tool of Wall Street
banks and multinational corporations. Robert Rubin really runs the country
and who the fuck knows what he thinks. It is like trying to figure out the
foreign policy of Goldman-Sachs. The one thing for sure is that they never
act altruistically.

Louis Proyect
(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)