In
“The Godfather,” Michael Corleone, played brilliantly by
Al Pacino, says that killing a rival mobster and crooked police
captain who conspired to kill his father is nothing personal —
it’s strictly business. Something similar can be said of
America’s wars and weapons trade today. As retired General
Smedley Butler said in the 1930s, U.S. military actions often take
the form of gangster capitalism. Want to know what’s really
going on? Follow the muscle and the money!
America
has “invested” itself in the Russia-Ukraine war, and I
use that word deliberately. U.S. weapons makers like Raytheon and
Lockheed Martin are making a killing, literally and figuratively, on
the ongoing war, whether by sending arms to Ukraine or in the major
boost forthcoming
to Pentagon spending supported by Democrats and Republicans in
Congress. (Who said bipartisanship is dead?) For all the
blue-and-yellow flags that America is flying in symbolic solidarity
with Ukraine, the true colors of this war, as with most wars, is red
for blood and green for money.
Economic
sanctions against Russia, meanwhile, are meant to damage the
financial wellbeing of that country, possibly leading to instability
and even collapse. And who would profit from such a collapse? And who
is profiting now from restricting fossil fuel exports from Russia? As
war drags on in Ukraine, disaster piles on disaster, and capitalism
has a way of profiting from war-driven disasters. Why do you think
America’s disastrous Afghan War lasted for two decades?
Curiously,
investment-speak in the U.S. military is quite common. Generals and
admirals talk of “investing” in new nuclear missiles and
immense ships. They further talk
of “divesting”
in certain weapons that have proven to be disasters in their own way,
like the F-22 fighter. What’s with all this “investing”
and “divesting” in the U.S. military? One thing is
certain: Generals won’t have to change their language as they
retire and move through the revolving door to join corporate boards
at major weapons contractors.
Today’s
generals and politicians never display the honesty of President
Dwight Eisenhower, who explained nearly seventy years ago that
weapons represent a theft from the people and their needs, not an
“investment.” Those who say there’s no business
like show business may be right, but Hollywood’s a piker
compared to the Pentagon, where there’s truly no business like
war business.
