America's War Machine: Vested Interests, Endless Conflicts - Hardcover

McCartney, James; McCartney, Molly Sinclair

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1250069777 ISBN 13: 9781250069771

Verlag: THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

A veteran Washington reporter reveals how years of military-slanted domestic and foreign policy have turned the U.S. into a perpetual war machine.

When President Dwight D. Eisenhower prepared to leave the White House in 1961, he did so with an ominous message for the American people about the "disastrous rise" of the military-industrial complex. Fifty years later, the complex has morphed into a virtually unstoppable war machine, one that dictates U.S. economic and foreign policy in a direct and substantial way.

Based on his experiences as an award-winning Washington-based reporter covering national security, James McCartney presents a compelling history, from the Cold War to present day that shows that the problem is far worse and far more wide-reaching than anything Eisenhower could have imagined. Big Military has become "too big to fail" and has grown to envelope the nation's political, cultural and intellectual institutions. These centers of power and influence, including the now-complicit White House and Congress, have a vested interest in preparing and waging unnecessary wars. The authors persuasively argue that not one foreign intervention in the past 50 years has made us or the world safer.

With additions by Molly Sinclair McCartney, a fellow journalist with 30 years of experience, America's War Machine provides the context for today's national security state and explains what can be done about it.

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JAMES MCCARTNEY had covered every president from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Bill Clinton. McCartney covered the White House, the State department, the Pentagon and relevant committees on Capitol Hill. He reported from about 30 countries, including Vietnam, the Soviet Union, the Middle East and Europe. After retirement from daily journalism, he taught courses in foreign policy and politics at Georgetown University. McCartney's papers, including about 4,000 of his articles, are in the Special Collections Research Center at Georgetown University's Lauringer Library.

MOLLY SINCLAIR MCCARTNEY worked as a newspaper reporter more than 25 years, including 14 years at the Washington Post. In 2012 she was appointed a Woodrow Wilson Public Scholar in Washington D.C. to do the research and interviews needed to finish America's War Machine.

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America's War Machine

Vested Interests, Endless Conflicts

By James McCartney, Molly Sinclair McCartney

St. Martin's Press

Copyright © 2015 Molly Sinclair McCartney
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-250-06977-1

Contents

Title Page, 
Copyright Notice, 
Dedication, 
Opening Note, by Molly Sinclair McCartney, 
Prologue, by James McCartney, 
1. Military Might and Money: The Pentagon Rules, 
2. Industry at the Wheel, 
3. Congress and the White House: A Vital Part of the Problem, 
4. Think-Tank Hawks and Interventionists, 
5. Flawed Intelligence and Exaggerated Threats, 
6. The American Empire, 
7. The Vortex: The Middle East, 
8. Nuclear Folly, 
9. Billions for Weapons Searching for Enemies, 
10. Send in the Drones, 
11. The Media: Cheerleaders for War, 
12. The Reckoning, 
Epilogue, by Molly Sinclair McCartney, 
Closing Note, by James McCartney, 
Acknowledgments, 
Notes, 
Bibliography, 
Index, 
About the Authors, 
Copyright, 

CHAPTER 1

MILITARY MIGHT AND MONEY: THE PENTAGON RULES

U.S. foreign policy is still too dominated by the military, too dependent upon the generals and admirals who lead our major overseas commands. — Admiral Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

If you think the State Department runs American foreign policy, think again.

The primary force that controls U.S. foreign policy in most recent administrations — including the administration of Barack Obama — has been the Pentagon. In the simplest sense, the Pentagon is where the money is, and in Washington, as elsewhere, money talks.

Even Admiral Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has expressed concern about the Pentagon's overwhelming influence on foreign policy. In a March 3, 2010, speech, Mullen declared, "U.S. foreign policy is still too dominated by the military, too dependent upon the generals and admirals who lead our major overseas commands."

Former secretary of defense Robert Gates has made the same point, noting that it seems to be much easier for Congress to vote for money for the Pentagon than for the State Department.

The September 11 terrorists understood the sources of influence that drive the American government. In targeting Washington, they crashed their hijacked airplane into the Pentagon. They ignored the State Department.

No part of the American power structure has a deeper vested interest in war than the Pentagon.

The United States emerged as a superpower in the years of the Cold War, beginning in the late 1940s, with a vast structure of sophisticated military forces, thousands of nuclear weapons, and a worldwide network of military bases. An American empire was constructed, far stronger and more extensive than any of the great empires of history.

Because of the competition with the Soviet Union, few questioned the necessity of a substantial military budget. It was inherent in America's role as a leader of the so-called Free World. But the Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and elemental logic would seem to dictate a substantial change in military posture. That has not happened.

For at least the last three decades — ever since Ronald Reagan became president in 1981 — and on many occasions before that, American foreign policy has had a distinct militaristic flavor that is well described by historian and former military officer Andrew Bacevich:

Today as never before in their history, Americans are enthralled with military power. The global military supremacy that the United States presently enjoys — and is bent on perpetuating — has become central to our national identity. More than America's matchless material abundance or even the effusions of its pop culture, the nation's arsenal of high tech weaponry and the soldiers who employ that arsenal have come to signify who we are and what we stand for.

One measure of America's bent toward a militarized foreign policy is its defense budget. According to an analysis by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based authority on military spending, the United States outspends the rest of the world on defense. The IISS reported that the United States spent $739.3 billion in 2011, compared to a total of $486.7 billion for the next nine countries, including $89.8 billion for China, $62.7 billion for the United Kingdom, and $52.7 billion for Russia.

Money talks, and in the U.S. budget it screams military.

As of 2013, the U.S. Defense Department employed more than 2 million people, including 1.4 million uniformed personnel and more than seven hundred thousand civilians, plus another 1.1 million part-time members of the National Guard and Reserves. The State Department employed about sixty-nine thousand people, including its Foreign Service, Civil Service, and overseas staff. Depending on whether you count the military's part-timers, the Department of Defense is thirty to forty-six times larger than the Department of State.

American foreign policy is meant to be run by the State Department, with its diplomatic officers on the front lines researching international affairs, negotiating with foreign governments, promoting America as a partner, and protecting U.S. citizens. But a sad clue to the real balance of power is that the U.S. government in recent years has employed more musicians in military bands than it has diplomats. As ridiculous as that may seem, it's not a joke. In 2008, a typical year, the score was seventy-five hundred military musicians versus fifty-five hundred diplomats.

Among the officials who have decried this imbalance are military leaders such as former defense secretary Robert Gates. In a lecture at Kansas State University, Gates said, "What is clear to me is that there is a need for a dramatic increase in spending on the civilian instruments of national security — diplomacy, strategic communications, foreign assistance, civic action, and economic reconstruction and development. ... We must focus our energies beyond the guns and steel of the military, beyond just our brave soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen."

For much of the past decade, the United States has struggled to help Afghanistan build a government that will meet its people's needs well enough to stabilize that country. The U.S. military established Provincial Reconstruction Teams to lead that work at the ground level. But when it needed U.S. diplomats to play key roles in working with local Afghan community leaders and officials, those jobs went unfilled because the State Department was too short on money to hire a thousand diplomats to fill vacant posts worldwide. As New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof said in reporting that story, the State Department could have filled all those positions for the cost of just one military C-17 cargo plane.

That is one example of the dramatic imbalance between the resources the United States devotes to diplomacy and the resources it devotes to the military. In short, America channels far more money into war than into peace.

The irony is that diplomacy and negotiations are more likely to end terrorism than is war. Of 648 terrorist organizations that operated worldwide between 1968 and 2006, only 7 percent were defeated by military force, according to a 2008 study by the RAND Corporation, a U.S.-government-funded think tank. Fully 43 percent of terrorist campaigns came to an end when members of the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1250069777
• ISBN 13: 9781250069771
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 304
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar