FWD: US war budget

[KXX4493553 at aol.com]

Thema:  HYP: US-Kriegsbudget    
Datum:  07.02.2002 17:36:23 Westeuropäische Normalzeit  
From:    faub16 at fau.org (FAU Berlin 16)
To:  hypnopaedia at list.free.de
    
    


## Nachricht vom 06.02.02 weitergeleitet
## Ersteller: s_h_hamilton at yahoo.com

Here's a Guardian article on Bush's Reaganite budget preceded by an  
excerpt from a statement on the War on Terror written by an obscure  
American group and published in the December/January issue of NZ's 'Class
Struggle' (see
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Rotunda/5050/classtruggle.html)
Does the analysis put forward in the excerpted statement help explain  
Bush's budget, which seems to have stumped many analysts?
SH

"Had the tragic events of 9/11 not occurred, those in power would have had  
to find another pretext to justify this imperialist war and its resulting  
attacks on workers rights and living conditions both here and abroad.

War makes good business sense

Why is this the case? The answer to this can only be understood in the  
context of a possible worldwide depression. This crisis first reared its  
head with the collapse of the so-called "Asian Tigers" in 1997 (South  
Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Thailand). To a certain degree, the international  
consequences of it were put off by the US absorbing imports from the  
stricken regimes while driving up credit to record amounts. However, these  
measures only deepened the contradictions of the US' boom which was built  
on quicksand and few saw if any benefits for the working class. Now that  
the consequences of the capitalists' policies are hitting the US economy  
in a big way, the big business is being compelled into actions that, while  
promising super profits for the rich, are a disaster for everyone else.

This depression is essentially a crisis of overproduction for the  
capitalists; that is, more commodities have been made then can be sold at  
a profit. Therefore, the capitalists must move their investment capital  
into areas of production that will not add to mountains of goods and  
services no one can afford. What is more, they must do so in such a way as  
to increase the exploitation of workers both in its semi-colonial slave  
states and here at home. Military investment is where capitalists are  
moving their money. It's a government guaranteed purchase (that is, your  
tax dollars), and when weapons are being blown up demand is created  
without adding to overproduction. Considering that the stock market lost  
over a trillion dollars in the week after 9/11 alone, there is going to be  
a whole lot of weapons building and blowing up to do."

Bush billions will revive cold war army

But defence experts say that will not help in the fight against terror

Julian Borger in Washington / Wednesday February 6, 2002
The Guardian

The Bush administration attempted yesterday to justify a stunning leap in  
spending on the military as defence analysts criticised the budget for  
pumping money into conventional weaponry inherited from the cold war era.

Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, defended the the 11% increase in  
Pentagon expenditure yesterday, telling the Senate armed services  
committee that it was necessary to compensate for "a decade of overuse and  
underfunding", and to prepare for future wars beyond the current anti- 
terrorist campaign. "When the cold war ended, a defence drawdown [cutback]  
took place that went too far... overshot the mark," the defence secretary  
said. "Now, through the prism of September 11, we can see that our  
challenge is not simply to fix the underfunding of the past." However, a  
breakdown of the budget figures suggests that relatively little of the  
$379bn (266bn) planned spending for 2003 is directly relevant to the  
requirements of combating shadowy terrorist groups such as al-Qaida.

A far greater proportion of the defence budget will go towards "big  
ticket" weapon systems designed for the large-scale conventional battles  
envisaged during the cold war. They had been facing the axe under the  
"military transformation" initially planned by George Bush and Mr  
Rumsfeld.

The sharp rise in defence spending proposed in President Bush's budget  
marks a defeat for reformers who had planned to transform the US military  
into a lighter, more mobile and more efficient force. Among the programmes  
to have survived widely expected cuts are three separate tactical  
warplanes with overlapping functions demanded by the armed forces: the  
navy's super hornet, the air force's F- 22 raptor and the joint strike  
fighter (JSF) intended for all the services.

On the campaign trail, Mr Bush said the country could not afford all three  
aircraft, but the budget allocates $12bn to be spent on them in 2003. When  
the JSF enters full production, it will cost twice as much as the current  
workhorse, the F-16, with a total bill of $200bn.

Another controversial weapon given a reprieve in Monday's budget is the  
crusader artillery system, a hefty mobile gun which critics said might  
have performed well in big land battles against Soviet tanks, but which is  
too heavy to be rapidly deployed in far-flung corners of the globe.

Paul Krugman, a liberal economist, argued in yesterday's New York Times:  
"The military build-up seems to have little to do with the actual threat,  
unless you think that al-Qaida's next move will be a frontal assault by  
several heavy armoured divisions." Loren Thompson, a senior analyst at the  
Lexington Institute, an independent defence thinktank, said the budget  
reflected "the staying power of a deeply entrenched bureaucracy in terms  
of protecting programmes it values".

Mr Rumsfeld and his chief strategic adviser, Andrew Marshall, had hoped to  
accelerate the pace of military reform, but even before September 11 they  
found themselves blocked by the heads of the armed services who refused to  
scrap established projects to make money available for a new generation of  
weapons such as the national missile defence (NMD) system, the B-2 stealth  
bomber and unmanned aircraft.

The terrorist attacks on New York and Washington - combined with Mr Bush's  
declaration that the US was threatened by an "axis of evil" consisting of  
Iraq, Iran and North Korea - has created a political atmosphere in which  
both sides in the debate can pursue their strategies at the same time.  
"Instead of wiping away previous priorities, Rumsfeld has just added his  
projects on top of them," Mr Thompson said.

As well as earmarking funds for the crusader, the three tactical aircraft  
and a host of other established projects, the budget sets aside $7.8bn for  
NMD and $630m for more global hawk unmanned aircraft. According to Steven  
Kosiak, an analyst at the Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments,  
the total 2003 defence budget will be 11% higher than the average military  
expenditure during the cold war. By 2007, under the Bush plan, defence  
spending will be 20% higher than average cold war levels. "Some advocates  
of transformation are not going to be happy," Mr Kosiak said. "It's partly  
because there is so much money available the administration does not have  
to make choices."

In the current political atmosphere, Congress is unlikely to question the  
defence budget and may even insist on boosting it further. Among the big  
winners will be the defence contractors such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing  
and United Defence, which makes the crusader.

The majority stake in United Defence is owned by the Carlyle Group, an  
investment company which employs George Bush, the president's father, and  
the former British prime minister John Major as lobbyists to open doors in  
the US and abroad. The elder Mr Bush has converted speaking fees into  
Carlyle stock, and stands to benefit considerably from the crusader's  
reprieve. Another significant consequence of the jump in US defence  
spending, most defence experts agree, is the further weakening of Nato.

In Kosovo and Afghanistan, America's Nato allies had little to contribute  
to the hi-tech air war that was the basis of US strategy. The Bush defence  
plan is likely to widen the technological gap, reinforcing the  
administration's ideological preference for unilateralism.

What the money is being spent on

Missile defence $7.8bn

Aircraft
Navy F/A-18E/F super hornet $3.3bn
Air force F-22 raptor $5.2 bn
F-35 joint strike fighter $3.5bn
Global hawk unmanned aircraft $630m

Artillery: Crusader artillery system $475m
=====
For "a ruthless criticism of every existing idea":
THR at LL, NZ's class struggle anarchist paper http://www.freespeech.org/thrall/
THIRD EYE, a Kiwi lib left project, at
http://www.geocities.com/the_third_eye_website/
and 'REVOLUTION' magazine, a Frankfurt-Christchurch production,
http://cantua.canterbury.ac.nz/%7Ejho32/


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