US MILITARY POLICY SINCE THE FALL OF THE SOVIET UNION

US MILITARY POLICY SINCE THE FALL OF THE SOVIET UNION: THE CONTEXT OF US-LED INTERVENTION

The current US military action in Afghanistan is part of a pattern of militarism expanding into the power vacuum resulting from the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Pentagon is moving as quickly as it can to establish global military dominance. Covert design of new nuclear weapons is a cornerstone of this dominance. It is accompanied by US government subsidy of foreign military sales, including outright gifts of weapons to especially co-operative governments. The result is a self- perpetuating trend toward a global garrison state or 'protectorate' with recurrent wars flaring up in one place after another around the globe as the 'threat' is perceived now here, now there. The only way to stop this is to expose and question the underlying commitment to military force.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union military threats to the US were hard to find. CIA and State Department officials said, "Only China and the successors of the former Soviet Union have the physical capability to strike the United States directly with weapons of mass destruction. We do not expect direct threats to the U.S. to arise within the next decade" and ". . . Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo. . . and Somalia are not major military threats. . . . It is simply not true that any problem anywhere is a threat to American security."

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell declared, "I'm running out of demons. I'm running out of villains. . . . I'm down to Castro and Kim Il Sung. . . ."

However, in 1991 the Joint Chiefs of Staff stated: "There is a high likelihood that weapons of mass destruction will continue to proliferate [note that their subsidy of foreign arms sales makes this prophecy self-fulfilling!] ... [and] the number of nations with long-range nuclear weapons will very likely increase." Therefore,... our nation requires a capable strategic Triad [land-, sea- and air-launched nuclear weapons]... to deter any potential adversary...." The Pentagon and other government agencies held a number of secret studies addressing "residual and emerging threats" with "thorough and compelling descriptions of the New Dangers [sic]." "It is not difficult to entertain nightmarish visions in which a future Saddam Hussein threatens American forces... with nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons," a Secretary of the Air Force testified. "If that were to happen, US nuclear weapons may well be a resource for seeking to deter execution of the threat." It was unknown whether "Cold War-style nuclear deterrence will be appropriate when facing the new nuclear dangers."

According to Congressional testimony by government officials, these studies concluded that instead of a monolithic Soviet 'threat,' we were faced with a diffuse and nebulous threat distributed around the world. These new threats and potential threats required very large military forces, enough to fight two major regional wars at once, against (e.g.) Iraq and Korea. Gen'l Colin Powell remarked. "History and central casting has supplied me with new [threats] along the way: Saddam Hussein, Mr. Aidid [of Somalia]." The military kept pretty much the same weapons as planned, although some older ones were discarded, and some of the larger nuclear warheads were removed from their launch vehicles and placed into storage as "a hedge to return to a more robust nuclear posture should that be necessary." Also, nuclear weapons development continued without full-scale tests under the 'Stockpile Stewardship Program,' including Livermore's National Ignition Facility. Several 'subcritical' nuclear tests with scaled-down pieces of bombs were conducted over the last couple of years, the data being used to refine the software used to design such weapons as the new B61-11 'Earth penetrotor.'

Since the early 1950s (official) US military spending has varied between $250 billion and $400 billion; when other military-related items like foreign military aid, veterans' benefits, and a portion of the interest on the national debt are included, the total almost doubles - consuming roughly half of all federal income taxes (excluding social security taxes). Official spending is again swinging up, projected to be $330 billion in FY05. Over half of federal research funding is for military purposes, and the proportion is increasing.

Not only did our government continue to buy glittering, expensive new weapons, but it continued (with minor lulls) to support sales of US arms to other countries by guaranteeing low-interest financing. It also loaned military equipment (including warplanes!) and personnel to US arms companies as marketing displays at major trade shows. A former assistant secretary of defense called it "an absurd spiral in which we export arms only to develop more sophisticated ones to counter those spread out all over the world." Worldwide military spending has dropped from nearly $1 trillion annually in the late 1980s to roughly $700 billion in 1997. (The Soviet Union used to exceed the US in arms sales but since 1991 the FSU has been only a minor player, with the US picking up much of the slack.) In 1995, the US arms industry got a $15 billion arms export loan program, guaranteed by the U.S. government, and a $200 million annual tax break. Over the past decades roughly half of the loans (almost $40 billion) have been forgiven, i.e., the weapons have become outright gifts from US taxpayers to favored governments. Arms exporters lobby heavily for these subsidies (second only to agricultural price supports); the top 25 in the US gave $10.8 million to politicians in the '95-'96 election cycle. Since 1991, The US government and arms industry has consistently sold just about half the weapons in the world by dollar amount, and up to two-thirds of the weapons sold to developing countries.

Further, the armed forces actually give away, or sell as surplus, used weapons - even destroyers! - in order to make room for upgrades. There is rarely any public record of this; researchers have found total giveaways (original value) for three years: 1993 ($515.8 million); 1994 ($626.9 million); and 1995 ($504.7 million). Sometimes arms are given to two countries which are rivals: Turkey and Greece; Argentina and Chile, which are beginning an arms race; Israel and Egypt. US-made weapons are used brutally by their recipients to crush dissent around the globe from East Timor to Chiapas. For example:

Since 1980 the United States has sold or given Turkey - a NATO ally - $15 billion worth of weapons. In 1992-3, the Pentagon gave them 1,509 tanks, 54 fighter planes, and 28 heavily armed attack helicopters which were removed from Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union. In the last decade the Turkish army has leveled, burned, or forcibly evacuated more than 3,000 Kurdish villages, killing thousands - primarily civilians - and displacing millions. The State Department has acknowledged that Turkey used M-113 armored personnel carriers and Cobra helicopters given to it in indiscriminate attacks on Kurdish villages.

The expansion of NATO into eastern Europe has created a further market for US arms, and our new allies' existing arsenals will likely find their way into Third World arms bazaars at clearance-sale prices - creating more threats to justify the next generation of weapons. For a country which does so much to litter the globe with weapons and which spends more on its military than the next nine (!) countries combined, to single out a few murderous thugs here and there and bomb their countries for weeks on end does not promote global peace and security.