Ironies of Overdevelopment

A common explanation for the end of the Cold War was that the Soviet Union was forced into unsustainable competition with the U.S. through the arms race. According to this theory, the USSR’s demise occurred because a “flagging, state-owned economy simply couldn’t match the escalation in defense spending” initiated by Ronald Reagan, especially the hyper-expensive (for the time) Strategic Defense Initiative, a.k.a. Star Wars, that was intended to militarize space.

This explanation is convenient for proponents of ever-greater spending of our national treasure on arms and weapons. After all, if we felled the Soviet adversary by building up a vast arsenal of fear-inducing armaments, what new candidate for seriously rivalry to America could possibly arise as long as we keep up the flow of cash to Raytheon and Northrup Grumman?

As a result, we have enthusiastic backing for fancy new weapons like the trillion-dollar F-35 fighter jet and the B-21 Raider stealth bomber, recently given a Hollywood/TopGun-style unveiling [above]. These big-ticket projects are lucrative sources of contracts certain to warm the hearts of elected officials standing by to welcome the jobs and economic stimulus to their districts, along with the loot needed for their next campaign. Given our system of legalized bribery, this arrangement is the classic self-licking ice cream cone.

For example, the bat-winged B-21 Raider will cost $700 million each, and the plan is to build at least 100 of these babies at an estimated cost of $32 billion, including research and development, over the next 5 years. Earlier this month, the National Defense Authorization Act of 2023 sailed through Congress authorizing $857 billion in “defense” spending, $45 billion more than Biden had requested. The measure included the establishment of a “multiyear, no-bid contract system” for Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, and other weapons manufacturers to “expand their industrial base” and assure ongoing production of essential munitions.

That sure makes it sound as though the U.S. has the wherewithal to put machinery and equipment on the battlefield at almost a moment’s notice, reminiscent of the enormous U.S. industrial mobilization that took place in the run-up to World War 2. In fact, the U.S. has rushed $20-some billion worth of weapons to Ukraine in the last nine months.

So why is Ukraine running out of ammo? Ukrainian president Zelensky recently announced his wish list for replenishing his army’s supplies, including 300 new tanks, 600 to 700 new infantry fighting vehicles, and 500 new Howitzers, and, one assumes, the ammunition, spare parts, and technical assistance to make this ordnance usable.

That sounds like a lot of hardware. But when comparing those figures to the amount of weaponry already lost, we get a slightly different view. Ukraine started off the war with 2430 tanks, ranked 13th in the world. Ukraine also had 11,435 armored vehicles and 2040 artillery batteries. Where did it all go?

Without having a clue about military matters, I would hazard a wild guess that it’s mostly been blown up by the Russians, who must have even more, plus total dominance of the skies as the Ukrainian air force was destroyed in the first week of hostilities. Furthermore, despite regular announcements that the Russians are about to “run out” of this or that essential piece of weaponry, they miraculously seem to keep churning the stuff out.

By contrast, NATO has completely depleted its reserves of useful materièl according to multiple reports. What about the back-up supplier, the US of A? Well, turns out the industrial capacity of the American powerhouse, unequaled in history, second to none, etc., etc., can’t crank out the supplies until, in some cases, the middle of next year.

Don’t take my word for it: here are Bradley Bowman and Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery (ret.) writing in Defense News this past October. Year after year, they write,

. . . budgets were proposed and approved that saw crucial munitions purchased at the lowest possible rate companies could sustain, hollowing out the industrial base. Now, Washington can no longer disregard a munitions production shortfall that endangers U.S. military readiness.

What we need to do now, they argue, is to fund “major production increases of key munitions, targeted measures to expand industrial capacity, and the provision of multiyear procurement authorities that incentivize private sector investment.”

In other words, the U.S. has shot itself in the foot through its lean-and-mean (“just-in-time”) industrial policy in which companies were encouraged/permitted to locate production offshore and pocket the nice difference between what American factory workers used to get and the poverty wages they paid to virtual slaves in Honduras, Pakistan, or Cambodia. Turns out that’s actually not too smart when applied to tanks, trucks, and ammo IF you turn out to actually need them in a hurry.

But the big bucks were always in the F-21s, nuclear weapons upgrades, and the like, so everyone in Washington could bask in the bright sunlight of the MICIMATT (the Military-Industrial-Counter-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think Tank complex) and refill their poolside cocktails from the bountiful overflow of U.S. Treasury cash without worrying about actual preparedness. How ironic it will be if financialized late capitalism turns out to be incompetent at sustaining the military machine that made its global domination possible.

Russia, on the other hand, seems to have developed an industrial/military policy that enables it to produce everything it needs for war at a fraction of the cost, perhaps because financiers and rentier capitalists have not been permitted to take over the Russian economy—which incidentally is doing just fine.

Maybe the referee of the great Cold War World Cup has not yet blown his final whistle. Now that would be an own goal for the ages.

The political class reminds us of its [class] interests

The comfortably bipartisan display of disdain for the needs of a group of essential railroad workers—led by Lunch Bucket Joe of Scranton—is yet another reminder that the fibers that bind our multicolored rulers together are far more durable than the hues of their respective ribbons.

It was truly a Bastille Day moment to see the assembled millionaires and beneficiaries of generous federal benefits, exhorted by “Labor” Secretary Walsh and Mayo Peter the transport minister (fresh from his multi-month paternity leave), smash rail workers’ fight for adequate sick leave in the wake of a HEALTH epidemic that killed off a million of us.

Not that anyone is digging up cobblestones for an assault on the headquarters of Berkshire Hathaway where railway tycoon Warren Buffett can now add a few billions to his unspeakable fortune. We’re too busy hating on either the “libs” or the “fascists” to realize that the great 99% without control over our own lives have a lot in common: the fact that we’re being equally screwed by our insatiable neo-feudal elites powerless over their addiction to acquisition.

Before this week’s tragicomically crude display of ruling class greed, we were living in a curiously insouciant time after the popcorn fart of the midterms when the Republican blowout did not occur. For a few days, the two factions, the reds and the blues, stared hatefully at each other in roughly matched hemispheres. It was easy to think that nothing much was going to change.

Although the current temporary lull is unlikely to last, the treatment of the railroad workers was a bracing reminder of what a puppet show we’re getting from these folks. The barons of late financialized capitalism are accelerating their class war, and on that score they’re fully on board with each other and against us.

Our inflamed national discourse, full of denunciation and alarm on either side, obscures the superficial nature of the political differences at the top. Do the two bands truly disagree about the country’s future course? If so, in what ways? Do they truly represent distinct social forces? If so, what are they?

On the surface, public policy disagreements are expressed in increasingly hostile language, suggestive of profound and fundamental differences on all manner of issues, things like abortion access; crime control and policing; social benefits and their expansion (or reduction); lately, public health measures; perhaps the content of education and educational materials; the eternal blame for the cost of everyday necessities. But how much do the two teams really diverge in their proposed responses once we look past the rhetorical variants?

Who represents the working classes in the face of economic turmoil and suffering? Republicans classically carry hod for big business, but the world of big finance has tilted toward Democrats in recent years. Both insist that long-standing elements of the New Deal are or soon will be on the chopping block as amply demonstrated this week. Workers are expendable, and the bosses have no problem shoving that fact in our faces because the much vaunted “resistance” promptly collapses when they do. (Some “progressive” email lists and FB sites leapt to the defense of Biden so quickly I had to be careful not to drink coffee while reading. The DSA camp, mercifully, is having none of it.)

We shouldn’t be surprised. For years unions have backed Democrats and got very little in return while rural voters and angry blue-collar workers cheered Trump and got even less. Whichever party is in power, the beleaguered masses face impossible housing costs, medical bankruptcy, educational debt peonage, and only by accident a bit of economic relief via an accidentally favorable job market.

Republicans beat the drums of crime and capitalize on people’s fears, steadily inflamed by tabloid-style coverage of the day’s horrors. For their part, Democrats go defensive and backtrack on any nuanced approaches to public safety and criminal justice—New York City is a prime example. They fall back on demagogy, call for more police, more jail time, and harsher conditions, so while the rhetoric shifts a tad this way or that, the end result is largely the same: violent crimes continue to plague us, and prisons bulge with ever more discarded lives.

Which is the party of peace? Which is the party for reining in the military industrial complex, for seeking savings in our bloated military budget? Republicans denounce the Democrats in power as too stingy with cash for the Pentagons and the arms industries; Democrats in power now outdo them in shoveling money to new initiatives and break all records with multi-billion-dollar packages for their failing adventure in Ukraine.

Which is the party defending our privacy from the intrusions of the security state and the snoops of Silicon Valley? Neither. Which is the party against regime change in foreign countries? Trump made noises against that idea, then hired a passel of neocons dedicated to keeping it up. Democrats openly claim America’s right as the shining guardian of virtue against foreign despots and criminals, conveniently defined to justify the next war, the next invasion, the next militarized hotspot.

Which party promises to preserve our civil liberties and the rule of law, the party that established dungeons in Guantánamo where detainees languish without criminal charges for 20 years or the party that promised to abolish them and never did?

Which is the party for fair terms of trade, for protecting American workers from foreign quasi-slave labor? Which party is prepared to face down the monopolies and cartels that are gobbling up the economy and turning us all into serfs?

Which is the party for preserving Medicare benefits, for protecting Social Security? The party that encouraged deep invasions by private insurance to extract juicy profits from government reimbursed programs? Oh, that would be both.

No doubt partisans of each camp will insist that they represent virtue, and the others, vice. They will point out areas where their side actively works in favor of one policy item or another that clearly distinguishes them from the others. Democrats could credibly argue that the antitrust awakening engineered by Biden appointees is a concrete break with decades of past practice. Republicans could claim they are the ones truly hostile to monopolies, especially those headed by Silicon Valley moguls who ban Trumpian speech on social media.

But which of the parties will resist the mountains of cash available at the commanding heights of the finance sector, ready to rain down on the favored to crush the rebellious? Which will defy Northrup Grumman and Raytheon and dare to propose a modus vivendi with Russia and China in a world slipping from decades of U.S. domination?

The cheers of World Cup fans at the entry of a spherical object into a net are comforting. The goals act as substitutes for the desire of our clannish biped race to plunge knives into hated foreigners, and as such I enjoy seeing their energies dissipate harmlessly. In the end, though, what do we celebrate when our team, in hockey, basketball, politics, or synchronized swimming, emerges with the gold or the trophy or the Senate seat? Those who live for “owning the libs” or crushing the Trumpian meatheads can expect only temporary relief from the gnawing doubt that our creaking, hyper-financialized, irrational economic system headed by experts in propaganda and not much else is capable of navigating the ship of state increasingly lost at sea.