[PEN-L:4655] Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: On Military Keynesianism

[Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Max writes:
>Oh.  Well, if the Fed budget stays as high as 20 percent of GDP, then the
>military budget would still be quite a bit smaller than it was in 1986, and
>still a shadow of itself in 1960, relative to GDP.
>
>Which gives you an idea of how far we have to go to get back to military
>keynesianism.

I know I came into this discussion very late in the game (and missed almost
all of the excellent contributions that Pen-lers have made and so threaten
to repeat points already made), but I can't resist throwing my two rupiahs
in:  I think that it is right that military Keynesianism has shrunk as a
part of US fiscal policy. Less and less, we see the federal budget as a
balance wheel on the US economy. Instead, it's state and local governments,
which are mostly forced to raise taxes or cut spending in a recession, that
are doing "government work." So the economy is less stable than it used to be.

I think it's a mistake to go too far with any kind of MK explanation of
wars (like the one against Serbia and Iraq -- who would have guessed that
the Big Draft Dodger would be fighting a two-front war?)  Actual policies
are the result of a complex balance of all the contending forces within the
ruling class. (Non-RC groups can have an effect here, but at present are
pretty damn weak, except in the sense that the US ruling elite hesitates
long and hard before committing ground troops. That's what's meant by the
"Vietnam Syndrome.") Some -- especially in the military industry -- push
for military welfare and thus military Keynesianism, but other sections
have other goals.  The capitalists usually don't know what their best
foreign policy is, so they have to rely on think tanks, the Pentagon, the
Council on Foreign Relations, the New York TIMES, interest groups, etc. to
figure it out for them.  They -- the rich elite -- may not know exactly
what they're doing in Serbia or Iraq. (They do know that some of them are
making big bucks selling arms to the world, despite the fact that it's
setting the stage for new wars down the pike.) But they don't always get
what they want, partly because of political division and partly because of
foreign opposition.  For example, I don't think they expected the strategic
bombing of Serbia to unleash an ethnic fury in Kosovo. The US and NATO
don't think in terms of the sociology of foreign countries. Milosovich
(sp?) is seen as a tyrant, pure and simple, someone to be humiliated and
overthrown. All the US/NATO has to do is bomb and M. will give in ... or at
least that was the theory.  It's like Wilson Goode & the Philadelphia
Police's theory of how to deal with MOVE. (BTW, it's true that even thought
the bombing sparked the ethnic fury, it's wrong to ignore the blame that
the ethnic supremacists in Serbia deserve.)

Frankly, I think it has something to do with Clinton's "gays in the
military" fiasco. He promised to end the mistreatment of gays by the
military, but then found himself facing a sh*tstorm of opposition. He caved
in, of course, as intelligent people should have expected. But it was the
beginning of his continuous effort to be "more of a hawk than thou," caving
in to the jingoists of the liberal left and the radical right and everyone
in between. In the end, Clinton's foreign policy is the same as Bush's.

But I don't think that the injustices against the Albanian Kosovars has
anything to do with the attacks on Serbia. After all, the US didn't defend
the people of Chiapas against the Mexican government. It didn't intervene
in Borneo. It didn't intervene in Rwanda. Human rights is just a front.

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/JDevine.html