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October 20, 2013 Tomgram: William Astore, War! What Is It Good For? Profit and Power
It’s no news (and in fact rarely makes it off
the inside pages of our newspapers) that the U.S. dominates -- one
might almost say monopolizes -- the global arms market. In 2011, the
last year for which figures are available, U.S. weapons makers tripled
their sales to $66.3 billion and were expected to remain
in that range for 2012 as well. In other words, they took 78% of the
market that year, with Russia coming in a vanishingly distant second at
$4.8 billion in sales.
As Currier writes, “The switch from State to Commerce represents a
big win for defense manufacturers, who have long lobbied in favor of
relaxing U.S. export rules, which they say put a damper on international
trade. Among the companies that recently lobbied on the issue:
Lockheed, which manufactures C-130 transport planes, Textron, which
makes Kiowa Warrior helicopters, and Honeywell, which outfits military
choppers.”This country has long had a special propensity for exporting things that go boom in the night: the products of both the military-industrial complex and Hollywood, each a near-monopoly in its particular market. As it happened, on the very eve of a government shutdown, the Pentagon caught the spirit of the times by dumping $5 billion into the coffers of defense contractors for future weaponry and equipment of all sorts. As TomDispatch regular Bill Astore writes today, the business of America has increasingly become war, so no one should be surprised that, even with the government officially shut down, the Obama administration didn’t turn off the lights in the offices where arms deals are a major focus of attention. As Cora Currier of ProPublica recently reported, in those shutdown weeks, the administration, in fact, lent an especially helping hand to American arms dealers. It loosened controls over military exports by moving the licensing process for foreign sales on “whole categories” of military equipment from the State Department (which, at least theoretically, has to consider the human rights records of countries slated to receive arms packages) to the Commerce Department, where, it seems, just about anything goes. The big weapons firms have been lobbying for this for quite a while. So while the government may have been closed for you, if you were a child in need of government-funded meals or an abused woman in need of a shelter or a rancher whose cattle just died in a massive snowstorm, the government remained open and hard at work for the major weapons companies. Oh, and if you were a reporter wanting to know more about the recent arms sales decision, then the shutdown got in your way, too. As Currier adds, “An interview with Commerce Department officials was canceled due to the government shutdown, and the State Department did not respond to questions.” Let William Astore take it from there. Tom The Business of America Is War |
