Tag Archives: Defense contractors

US Big Defense, the Only Winner of the Ukraine Proxy War, by Dan Steinbock

The big defense and intelligence contractors have been the only consistent winners in the wars the U.S. has fought since World War II. From Dan Steinbock at antiwar.com:

The Unwarranted Ukraine Proxy War: A Year Later

Not only do these global military contractors arm Ukraine, but they stand to benefit from the re-militarization of Western Europe, Japan, and the new NATO members.

To Russia and Ukraine, the crisis is an existential issue. To the US and NATO, it’s a regime-change game. To Europe, it means the demise of stability – in the world economy, lost years (and that’s the benign scenario).

That’s how I characterized the US/NATO-led proxy war against Russia in Ukraine back in early March 2022. I argued that it was an “avoidable war that will penalize severely Ukraine, Russia, the US and the NATO, Europe, developing countries and the global economy.”

At the time, the prediction was seen as contrarian. But it has prevailed. However, on January 25 the Ukraine proxy war entered a new, still more dangerous phase. The commitment of some 70 US, German, UK and Polish battle tanks herald lethal escalation, although hundreds more are needed to defeat Russia.

Not only will economic and human costs climb even further, but strategic risks, including the potential of nuclear confrontation, will soar. With such escalation in high-tech arms sales to Ukraine, regional and military spillovers are a matter of time.

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The West Is Incentivizing Russia To Hit Back, by Caitlin Johnstone

If Russia reacted to every U.S. and Ukrainian provocation we’d already be in a full-on war with Russia. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

Well the omnicidal war sluts won the debate over sending tanks to Ukraine, so now it’s time to start arguing for sending F-16s.

In an article titled “Ukraine sets sights on fighter jets after securing tank supplies,” Reuters reports the following:

“Ukraine will now push for Western fourth generation fighter jets such as the U.S. F-16 after securing supplies of main battle tanks, an adviser to Ukraine’s defence minister said on Wednesday.

Ukraine won a huge boost for its troops as Germany announced plans to provide heavy tanks for Kyiv on Wednesday, ending weeks of diplomatic deadlock on the issue. The United States is poised to make a similar announcement.

Just in time for the good news, Lockheed Martin has announced that the arms manufacturing giant happens to be all set to ramp up production of F-16s should they be needed for shipment to Ukraine.

“Lockheed Martin has said that it’s ready to meet demands for F-16 fighter jets if the US and its allies choose to ship them to Ukraine,” Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp reports. “So far, the US and its allies have been hesitant to send fighter jets to Ukraine due to concerns that they could be used to target Russian territory. But the Western powers seem less and less concerned about escalation as the US and Germany have now pledged to send their main battle tanks.”

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U.S. Defense Contractors Sponsor Party at Ukraine’s D.C. Embassy, by Michael Tennant

How appropriate! The defense contractors certainly should host a party for Ukraine; the country has made them a ton of money. From Michael Tennant at thenewamerican.com:

U.S. Defense Contractors Sponsor Party at Ukraine’s D.C. Embassy
David Monniaux/Wikimedia Commons

Defense contractors who are raking in big bucks arming Ukraine at American taxpayers’ expense sponsored a December 8 party at the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, Vox reported Friday.

Although the Ukrainian ambassador and defense attaché were the ones officially inviting D.C. bigwigs to a reception “on the occasion of the 31st anniversary of the armed forces of Ukraine,” the invitation stated that the event was “sponsored by” four U.S. defense contractors — Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Pratt & Whitney, and Lockheed Martin — whose logos collectively occupied more space on the card than the official Ukrainian emblems.

It’s easy to see why these companies would be thrilled with Ukraine’s armed forces right now: Those forces need weapons, and they’re getting most of them from American defense contractors, courtesy of U.S. taxpayers.

President Joe Biden, who has said his administration will support Ukraine for “as long as it takes” to beat back the Russians, has already convinced Congress to send Kyiv $68 billion, and is asking for another $38 billion.

Meanwhile, he has also sent Ukraine $19.3 billion worth of direct military assistance, much of it in the form of supposedly excess weapons. Biden claims the power to do this under “presidential drawdown authority,” which allows the chief executive — under “emergency” conditions — to transfer unneeded weapons, then replenish the stocks at taxpayer expense.

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The Lifeblood of the American War Machine, by Lenny Broytman

The military-industrial complex’s tentacles reach deep into American industry and across the entire U.S. From Lenny Broytman at issuechronicle.substack.com:

Defense giants like Huntington Ingalls are the ones who make headlines but it’s the company’s network of suppliers that makes the military-industrial complex tick

Nothing exemplifies the waste of government spending quite like the US military’s fleet of aircraft carriers. Because so many people are getting a piece of the pie, it’s a budgetary line item that only seems to go in one direction and has become a spending addiction the US just can’t seem to shake.

The defense dollars never stop flowing to weapons manufacturers like Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon, but the contracts these industry leaders receive are generally just the tip of the iceberg. It’s only once you zoom out and consider the thousands of suppliers they work with that the military-industrial complex’s grip on our economy truly snaps into focus.

It’s an ecosystem that keeps countless communities in the United States afloat but it does so at the expense of a global military footprint that’s killed and displaced millions, has destabilized regions on multiple continents, and has ultimately made us less safe. Increasing our investment in the Pentagon ensures that this will never end. As a result, the economy we’ve essentially engineered depends on a future that is consumed by warfare. It’s a deeply disturbing way to construct a society but that’s what we’ve done.

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Neo-Conservatism is Alive and Well in the GOP Post-Trump, by Sean Willich

Neither party wants to confront or capitalize on the truth that most of the time most Americans don’t want to go to war. Both parties get too much money from defense contractors. From Sean Willich at antiwar.com:

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has been yet another polarizing event in the news cycle. It seems like other topics being covered by the mainstream media that if you do not have the correct opinion then you are some sort of villain, in this case you are a pro-Russian propagandist. So, what is the establishment narrative? Well, it’s simple, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a threat to western democracy and America should be involved, doesn’t that sound familiar? Establishment Neo-Conservatives and Neo-Liberals started ringing the war bells before it was clear that Russia was going to invade Ukraine. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin expressed how the Russian threat to Ukraine could lead to a possible hot conflict between the U.S. and Russia. Republican Senator Roger Wicker suggested that we need to leave the nuclear option on the table. Many politicians have voiced their support for Ukraine, some calling for boots on the ground, and many calling for President Joe Biden to do more to support Ukrainian forces. All of this has done nothing but escalate the war in Ukraine.

Currently, President Biden is increasing financial support for Ukraine. Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal recently claimed that Ukraine has received $12 Billion in weapons and financial aid since the start of the invasion, obviously not all of this has come from the US It does seem that this war is dragging out much longer than anticipated by the Russians. It is widely reported that Vladimir Putin thought that taking Ukraine would be an easy task. Now whether this is the case depends on what news sources you are listening to. Some reports have said that Ukraine is holding back the Russian military, other reports have depicted a much bleaker situation for the Ukrainians. Some reports have stated the Ukraine and Russia are close to a cease fire agreement. It is hard to decipher what is really going on in Ukraine.

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The Cold War Racket Never Ended for the U.S., by Jacob G. Hornberger

It’s the same old grift, only the putative “enemies” change. From Jacob G. Hornberger at fff.org:

There is something important to recognize about the Cold War: It was not ended by the U.S. government. Instead, it was ended by the Soviet Union. If it had been up to the U.S. national-security establishment, the Cold War would have gone on forever because it is the best racket in U.S. history, one that continually expanded the tax-funded largess, power, and influence of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA.

In a sense, the U.S. national-security establishment considered the Soviet Union’s unilateral decision to end the Cold War a betrayal. The Soviets weren’t supposed to do that. The supposed international communist conspiracy to conquer the United States that was supposedly based in Moscow was serving as a fantastic boogeyman that was used to frighten the American people into supporting the continuation of the Cold War racket.

There is something else to recognize about the Cold War: For the U.S. government, it really never ended. They weren’t about to let the Reds dictate the end of their racket. They were bound and determined to figure out some way to keep the racket going.

That’s what keeping NATO around was all about, along with the gradual absorption of former Warsaw Pact countries (without the express approval of Congress), which enabled NATO forces to get closer and closer to Russia’s borders.

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Bipartisanship: US House Races MASSIVE Ukraine Weapons Transfer to the Floor! by Daniel McAdams

Congress critters fall all over themselves to give defense contractors money. From Daniel McAdams at lewrockwell.com:

In Washington the global US military empire is a bipartisan affair. With a trillion dollar yearly military budget, there are plenty of opportunities for both the position and the opposition parties to thrust snouts deeply into the trough.

While Ron Paul was in Congress and GW Bush was president, we did a good deal to craft a bipartisan antiwar coalition in opposition to the Iraq war and other Bush-ite neocon misadventures.  Then Obama was elected and pursued the same policies of global military empire – but with a better smile – and our coalition disintegrated. Suddenly the Democrats (with a couple of exceptions) were uninterested in the antiwar issue.

Such is the case now, when Obama’s great “success” – the US-led coup in Ukraine – is back in the headlines. Now Obama’s second fiddle is “in charge” of things and those under him who pull the levers are determined to solidify their “great achievement” of peeling Ukraine away from its neighbor and dropping that basket-case into the lap of Brussels and Washington. So for the past five weeks they have been ginning up the idea that Russia is about to invade Ukraine – even when Ukraine’s own defense secretary is practically laughing at Washington’s breathless assertions.

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How Private Contractors Disguise the Real Costs of War, by William D. Hartung

Nobody wants to open the can of worms that is military and intelligence contracting. From William D. Hartung at inkstickmedia.com:

Beyond wasting billions, private contractors are enablers of war.

It’s well known that waste, fraud, and abuse were widespread among contractors working for the US government in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the negative consequences of the heavy reliance on contractors to help wage wars go well beyond that to the question of whether and how the United States wages war.

The issue of waste in America’s endless wars should certainly not be ignored, given its immense costs to taxpayers. As early as 2011 — ten years into the Afghan war — the congressionally-mandated Commission on Wartime Contracting estimated that there had already been between $31 billion and $60 billion in waste related to contracting in the two war zones. There has been no comparable analysis since, but it’s safe to say that there have been tens of billions more in waste — including criminal fraud — in the most recent ten years of war. The Special Investigator General for Afghan Reconstruction has produced scores of reports documenting waste in Afghanistan, even as it has helped convict 160 companies and individuals of fraud and saved taxpayers $3.8 billion in the process.

Hiding the full costs of war, from the number of casualties to the true size of the force, makes unnecessary conflicts more sustainable.

All of this occurred in the context of the record surge in Pentagon spending that accompanied and was publicly justified by what was originally known as the Global War on Terror. As I noted in a joint report of the Center for International Policy and the Brown Costs of War Project published in September 2021, the post-9/11 surge in Pentagon spending resulted in $14 trillion in Pentagon spending from 2001 to 2020, up to half of which went to contractors. Among the report’s findings were that the biggest beneficiaries by far were the top five weapons contractors, namely Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman. These five companies alone have split $2.1 trillion in contracts since 2001. To give some sense of scale, Lockheed Martin alone received $75 billion in Pentagon contracts in 2020, which was more than one and one-half times the combined budgets of the State Department and the Agency for International Development. If the Biden administration is truly to put diplomacy first, this extreme militarization of our budget must be corrected.

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The Omnipotent Power of the Pentagon, by Jacob Hornberger

The Pentagon and the big defense contractors own Washington. From Jacob Hornberger at fff.org:

No matter how you feel about the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex, you can’t help but be impressed at how they are able to successfully plunder and loot American taxpayers, no matter how much needless death, suffering, and destruction they wreak on people around the world.

Think about it: They just exited Afghanistan after their 20-year failed war against the Taliban, a war that left thousands of American soldiers and countless Afghans dead and the entire country destroyed. On top of all that death and destruction was the total waste of hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer money. It’s also worth mentioning that for those entire 20 years, they intentionally lied to the American people regarding progress in their undeclared forever war.

And what has been the result? They get rewarded! Congress is on the verge of giving them more taxpayer money than ever before! That’s impressive, even if in a negative way!

In other words, they are no longer wasting money in Afghanistan in the form of bombs, bullets, gasoline, oil, medicare care for wounded soldiers, etc. That’s got to mean that a lot of money is now being saved.

So, does Congress reduce the military’s budget by the amount of money that is no longer being wasted in Afghanistan? Are you kidding? Like I say, believe it or not, they are actually upping the amount of U.S. taxpayer money that they are allocating to these people! They are giving them more taxpayer money than when they were in Afghanistan wasting all that taxpayer money!

That is power, sheer power! How can anyone not be impressed by it, even if In a negative way?

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A Bright Future for Weapons and War, by William Astore

Defense contractor stocks have been one of the best performing stock market sectors this century. Nothing suggests that they won’t continue to shine. From William Astore at tomdispatch.com:

The U.S. Military, Post-Afghanistan

Can We Finally Give Peace A Chance?

Yoda, the Jedi Master in the Star Wars films, once pointed out that the future is all too difficult to see and it’s hard to deny his insight. Yet I’d argue that, when it comes to the U.S. military and its wars, Yoda was just plain wrong. That part of the future is all too easy to imagine. It involves, you won’t be shocked to know, more budget-busting weaponry for the Pentagon and more military meddling across the globe, perhaps this time against “near-peer” rivals China and Russia, and a global war on terror that will never end. What’s even easier to see is that peace will be given no chance at all. Why? Because it’s just not in the interests of America’s deeply influential military-congressional-industrial complex.

When that vast complex, which President Dwight Eisenhower warned us about six decades ago, comes to my mind, I can’t help thinking of a song from the last years of the then seemingly endless Cold War. (How typical, by the way, that when the Soviet Union finally imploded in 1991, it barely affected Pentagon funding.)

“The future’s so bright (I gotta wear shades)” was that 1986 song’s title. And I always wonder whether that future could indeed be nuclear-war bright, given our military’s affection for such weaponry. I once heard the saying, “The [nuclear] triad is not the Trinity,” which resonated with me given my Catholic upbringing. Still, it’s apparently holy enough at the Pentagon or why would the high command there already be planning to fund the so-called modernization of the American nuclear arsenal to the tune of at least $1.7 trillion over the next 30 years? Given this nation’s actual needs, that figure blows me away (though not literally, I hope).

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