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William Astore, Will the Pentagon Budget Ever Shrink?

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In the spirit of this prolonged moment from hell, let me offer you a homemade conspiracy theory that will hopefully compete with the most vivid — or do I mean livid? — QAnon-ish ones around.  Imagine this (even though it’s not true) as an explanation for the origins of the disastrous war in Ukraine: the major weapons-making corporations of our own military-industrial complex plotted long and hard to ensure that Russian president Vladimir Putin invaded that country — and their agents in Russia did so brilliantly!  They convinced the oligarchs around Putin — but not too near, since no one gets within 100 yards of the guy — that the Ukrainians were just dying (so to speak) to welcome the Russian army as a liberation force. In their turn, those oligarchs convinced him that an invasion by the Red Army — and yes, they also got him to believe that the present shabby Russian military was still the Soviet force that, once upon a distant time, sent its tanks so successfully into Hungary and Czechoslovakia to repress the revolts of uppity locals — would be a surefire success.  And so they got their invasion, big time, but also something so much better. Specifically, in response to the disaster in Ukraine, the Biden administration has only recently called for yet another staggering hike in the Pentagon budget, a godsend for the U.S. arms industry. And it goes without saying that congressional Republicans are eager to send that sum higher yet.

What a plot! And of course, like so many other conspiracy theories of this era, both all too logical (once you start down that path) and crazy as a loon. Still, you do have to find some way to explain the fact that, in this century, no matter what was happening, the Pentagon budget has only continued to soar and the invasion of Ukraine has only made matters worse, or, if you’re a weapons manufacturer, better. It’s certainly a phenomenon wild enough for some kind of conspiracy theory, don’t you think? Especially since, long before the latest suggested national security budget hike, the Pentagon and crew were already raking in more money than the next 11 nations combined, even though the U.S. military hasn’t come out on top in a war that mattered since World War II.

With all of that in mind, take a moment with TomDispatch regular and retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel William Astore for a little “thought experiment” about that very budget.  Can we really be in a world too wild for it to ever decrease? Tom

What Would It Take for Military Spending in America to Go Down?

A Thought Experiment on the Military-Industrial Complex

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I have a question for you: What would it take in today’s world for America’s military spending to go down?  Here’s one admittedly farfetched scenario: Vladimir Putin loses his grip on power and Russia retrenches militarily while reaching out to normalize relations with the West. At the same time, China prudently decides to spend less on its military, pursuing economic power while abandoning any pretense to a militarized superpower status.  Assuming such an unlikely scenario, with a “new cold war” nipped in the bud and the U.S. as the world’s unchallenged global hegemon, Pentagon spending would surely shrink, right?

Well, I wouldn't count on it.  Based on developments after the Soviet Union's collapse three decades ago, here’s what I suspect would be far more likely to happen.  The U.S. military, aided by various strap-hanging think tanks, intelligence agencies, and weapons manufacturers, would simply shift into overdrive.  As its spokespeople would explain to anyone who’d listen (especially in Congress), the disappearance of the Russian and Chinese threats would carry its own awesome dangers, leaving this country prospectively even less safe than before. 

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Michael Klare, Not-So-Great Powers on a Dangerous Planet

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On a recent trip to Europe as part of his administration’s response to the invasion of Ukraine, Joe Biden visited a convention center in Poland. It was serving as a base for troops from the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division. After sharing a pizza with several of those soldiers, he gave them a little pep talk, suggesting that they “are the finest fighting force in the world and that’s not hyperbole.” In doing so, he put himself on a rather crowded presidential stage in this century. If anything, he was less effusive about the glories of the American military than either George W. Bush (“the greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known”) or Barack Obama (“the finest fighting force that the world has ever known”), since he restricted himself to the present moment.  Only Donald Trump begged to differ slightly, claiming instead that he would oversee “one of the greatest military build-ups in American history.”

One thing is for sure. When it comes to that military and its achievements, presidents tend to react hyperbolically. And in this, they’re in good (or do I mean bad?) company. After all, those “finest” soldiers of our time in Poland face — at least theoretically — an enemy military that Russian President Vladimir Putin clearly considered the finest around. (He, in fact, seems to have mistaken the present Russian military for the Red Army of the Soviet era.)

Today, TomDispatch regular Michael Klare, author most recently of All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change, offers a little history of just how Russian leaders have assessed what they’ve termed “the correlation of forces” in their military campaigns since World War II.  Putin is, in fact, just the latest Russian leader who has proved incapable of imagining how a populace defending its homes and homeland could hold off a more powerful military force. It’s striking that, in deciding to invade Ukraine, he seems not to have remembered the Afghan War of the 1980s — you know, the one that preceded the disastrous American version of the same — even though blowback from it left both the Red Army and the Soviet Union in shambles.

As it happens, Joe Biden is hardly the first American president to similarly misevaluate the abilities of the world’s “finest fighting force.” After all, since World War II, that force has had only a single brief winning war, the first Persian Gulf War of 1991 that, in retrospect, was but an introduction to a hell on Earth for this country in Iraq.  Otherwise, the American military, supported financially in a fashion that might be unparalleled in modern history — our “defense” budget is now larger than that of the next 11 countries combined and still rising dramatically — has either been unable to win (the Korean War, the Global War on Terror) or has simply lost (Vietnam, Afghanistan) all the significant conflicts it’s engaged in since World War II.  Given the financial resources put into the U.S. military-industrial complex in those years, perhaps that should be considered a record for the ages. With that in mind, let Michael Klare take you through the Russian version of the same. Tom

Understanding “The Correlation of Forces”

Why Russia Fumbled in Ukraine, China Lost Its Way, and America Should Exercise Restraint

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In Western military circles, it's common to refer to the “balance of forces” -- the lineup of tanks, planes, ships, missiles, and battle formations on the opposing sides of any conflict. If one has twice as many combat assets as its opponent and the leadership abilities on each side are approximately equal, it should win. Based on this reasoning, most Western analysts assumed that the Russian army -- with a seemingly overwhelming advantage in numbers and equipment -- would quickly overpower Ukrainian forces. Of course, things haven’t exactly turned out that way. The Ukrainian military has, in fact, fought the Russians to a near-standstill. The reasons for that will undoubtedly be debated among military theorists for years to come. When they do so, they might begin with Moscow’s surprising failure to pay attention to a different military equation -- the “correlation of forces” -- originally developed in the former Soviet Union.

That notion differs from the “balance of forces” by placing greater weight on intangible factors. It stipulates that the weaker of two belligerents, measured in conventional terms, can still prevail over the stronger if its military possesses higher morale, stronger support at home, and the backing of important allies. Such a calculation, if conducted in early February, would have concluded that Ukraine’s prospects were nowhere near as bad as either Russian or Western analysts generally assumed, while Russia’s were far worse. And that should remind us of just how crucial an understanding of the correlation of forces is in such situations, if gross miscalculations and tragedies are to be avoided.

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Stan Cox, Cap the Wells Before It’s Too Late

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In case you hadn’t noticed, we live on an eternally well-oiled and well-gased planet.  Only recently, for instance, Joe Biden announced that the U.S. was going to ramp up the supplies of frozen liquid natural gas (LNG) it sends to Europe by 15 billion cubic meters in response to the invasion of Ukraine and the sanctions on Russia that followed.  That’s a lot of gas and, as a result, it looks like new LNG terminals will be opened in the Gulf of Mexico in the coming years.  Hooray! The U.S., it seems, will be a fossil-fuel exporter until the end of time. The only sad news: the end of time may come sooner than we think.

In 2022, our choices on this planet seem increasingly clear and grim: blow it up, burn it up (or both). Yes, there have been increasing worries that, pushed against the wall by his failing invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin might turn to his nuclear arsenal in some fashion. Only recently, both Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s security council, and its defense minister spoke openly about that possibility. Medvedev specifically insisted that, under certain circumstances, his country, which has the largest nuclear stockpile on the planet, might indeed consider the first use of such weaponry. As he put it, that would be in response to “an act of aggression… committed against Russia and its allies, which jeopardized the existence of the country itself, even without the use of nuclear weapons, that is, with the use of conventional weapons.” In other words, nuclear weapons are again in play on planet Earth, but when it comes to ultimate destruction, what isn’t?

Sadly enough, Putin and crew are in good company when it comes to preparing for planetary annihilation. After all, this country is now engaged in a three-decade-long “modernization” of its own nuclear arsenal at the cost of at least $1.7 trillion. And more generally, the Biden administration is responding to the new Cold War by preparing to ramp up the “defense budget” to a monumental $813.3 billion in 2023 — and that, keep in mind, is before Congress even gets the chance, as they did last year, to hike it further. In fact, a group of 40 House and Senate Republicans is already lobbying for more!

Meanwhile, the globe’s biggest arms dealer is preparing to sell yet more weaponry to a Saudi regime that the president called a “pariah” while running for office, a country waging a war in Yemen (for which sanctions are unimaginable) whose cruelty and brutality outweigh even the horror now taking place in Ukraine. So, war is increasingly well-oiled, while when it comes to oil and natural gas, let TomDispatch regular Stan Cox, author of The Path to a Livable Future: A New Politics to Fight Climate Change, Racism, and the Next Pandemic, fill you in on the fix in which we find ourselves. With Europe embroiled in a new war and the planet heating up ever more rapidly (check out the latest melting news from Antarctica, for example), he suggests where, if we were in a saner world, we might indeed head from here. If only… Tom

How Not to Cope with Vladimir Putin by Drilling and Pumping

A Bipartisan Oil Rush or the Phasing Out of Fossil Fuels?

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While the Ukrainian people bear the lethal brunt of Russia's invasion, shockwaves from that war threaten to worsen other crises across the planet. The emergency that loomed largest before Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine began -- the heating of Earth’s climate -- is now looming larger still. The reason is simple enough: a war-induced rush to boost oil and gas production has significantly undercut efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

U.N. Secretary General António Guterres made that clear in an angry March 21st address blasting world leaders scrambling for yet more oil and gas. "Countries could become so consumed by the immediate fossil-fuel supply gap that they neglect or knee-cap policies to cut fossil-fuel use,” he said, adding, “This is madness.” He linked obsessive fuel burning with the endpoint toward which today’s clash of world powers could be pushing us, using a particularly frightening term from the original Cold War. “Addiction to fossil fuels is," he warned, "mutually assured destruction."

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