The most dangerous path for any economy is to go down the path of the military industrial complex. It produces nothing of benefit for the society concerned but creates wealth for a limited number of shareholders who rarely invest in their own societies and use tax havens to limit their exposure to social responsibility. Arms and munitions are never a long-term investment, in business terms having limited shelf life.
The industries themselves are highly automated and do not require huge numbers of employees but rely of sophisticated technology to ensure that their product meets the imagination of the purchasers.
Such industries tend to rely heavily on taxpayer subsidy and the need to find marketplaces, such marketplaces being ‘wars’. As a commercial venture, it is not beyond imagination to see that it is in the interest of such shareholders to see market places created, that wars must be created to allow for the consumption of the product.
It would be naïve to suggest that such market creation does not take place, and that arms manufactured under licence by ‘sides’ involved in conflict are as such money-making activities. Until the voters understand that the marketing of war and the creation of a demonised enemy is part of this process, these short-sighted endeavours will continue.
Wars invariably impact on the very gene pool of the society involved in removing the best and brightest early on, such was the practice in WWI and WWII and no doubt the impact of such a scope of killing the most motivated and brightest is still felt today.
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Great article Andrew.
Trump was able to use tariffs to bully countries into lifting their spending on weapons, arms and ammunitions. That was extortion plain and simple in many cases as it meant buying US-made weapons. What does it say about our leaders when they let him get away with that. Presumably, that was money that would have been used in some government service for the people being diverted to the few vested interests in the US military-industrial complex.
There seems to be some groundswell in the notion, whispered lest the wrong ears hear it, that we must not do anything to draw attention to ourselves from Trump and the US military, or the CIA will do to us what they did to Whitlam and many another countries. That is no way to govern a country.
Australia’s defence and intelligence strategies should be solely focused on defending Australia, not projecting force in some distant place for the benefit of the corporate elites of the US, the UK or any other foreign country.
The duopoly are taking us to a dark place, and not just as thongs hanging out the US backside. Labor supporters were flat out like lizards drinking telling us that if we didn’t vote Labor we’d get Dutton. They lied. The Greens and Socialist Alliance have long proposed a defence strategy of focusing just on defending Australia, we have options (and not just the Greens) to this Labor government that builds houses for US military but leaves thousands of Australians homeless.
A timely article.
We can only gasp at the stupidity of the larger nations of Europe, who denied Russia a seat at the table of European security, who then convinced Ukraine to continue with its futile war with Russia after peace terms had been agreed, and now find that not only is Ukraine going under, but they are also sinking after cutting trade links with Russia.
And their answer out of this dilemma?
Military Keyenesianism!
Hey, it works for the US so why not for Europe?
Apparently they are not aware that for military Keyenesianism to work you have to be constantly at war.
Or are they oblivious to US history?
And even with constant war things are not rosy on the economic front.
The US has not declared economic war on the world because they’ve discovered some hitherto unknown economic secret.
They’ve declared economic war because the foundations are shifting underfoot.
The only sensible way to go down the military production path is to establish high-tech missile and drone industries for defence, but establish them as dual purpose so that at some point the bulk of the production can be be diverted to peaceful ends.
But liberal economic theory has no place for planning, or for peace it would seem.