Beware the Pentagon’s Pandemic Profiteers
Hasn’t the Military-Industrial Complex Taken Enough of
Our Money?
By Mandy Smithberger
May 05, 2020 "Information
Clearing House"
- At
this moment of unprecedented crisis, you might think
that those not overcome by the economic and
mortal consequences of
the coronavirus would be asking, “What can we do to
help?” A few companies have indeed pivoted to making
masks and ventilators for an overwhelmed medical
establishment. Unfortunately, when it comes to the top
officials of the Pentagon and the CEOs running a large
part of the arms industry, examples abound of them
asking what they can do to help themselves.
It’s
important to grasp just how staggeringly well the
defense industry has done in these last nearly 19 years
since 9/11. Its companies (filled
with ex-military and
defense officials) have received trillions of dollars in
government contracts, which they’ve largely used to
feather their own nests. Data compiled by the
New York Times
showed that the chief executive officers of the top
five military-industrial contractors received nearly $90
million in compensation in 2017. An investigation that
same year by the Providence Journal discovered
that, from 2005 to the first half of 2017, the top five
defense contractors spent
more than $114 billion
repurchasing their own company stocks and so boosting
their value at the expense of new investment.
To put
this in perspective in the midst of a pandemic, the
co-directors of the Costs of War Project at Brown
University
recently pointed out
that allocations for the Food and Drug Administration,
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the
National Institutes of Health for 2020 amounted to less
than 1% of what the U.S. government has spent on the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan alone since 9/11.
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While
just about every imaginable government agency and
industry has been impacted by the still-spreading
coronavirus, the role of the defense industry and the
military in responding to it has, in truth, been
limited indeed. The
highly publicized use of military hospital ships in New
York City and Los Angeles, for example, not only had
relatively little
impact on the crises in
those cities but came to serve as a
symbol of just how
dysfunctional the
military response has truly been.
Bailing
Out the Military-Industrial Complex in the Covid-19
Moment
Demands
to use the Defense Production Act to direct firms to
produce equipment needed to combat Covid-19
have sputtered,
provoking
strong resistance from
industries worried first and foremost about their own
profits. Even conservative Washington Post
columnist Max Boot, a
longtime supporter of
increased Pentagon spending, has recently recanted,
noting how just such budget priorities have weakened the
ability of the United States to keep Americans safe from
the virus. “It never made any sense, as Trump’s 2021
budget had initially proposed, to increase spending on
nuclear weapons by $7 billion while cutting Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention funding by $1.2 billion,”
he
wrote. “Or to create an
unnecessary Space Force out of the U.S. Air Force while
eliminating the vitally important directorate of global
health by folding it into another office within the
National Security Council.”
In fact,
continuing to prioritize the U.S. military will only
further weaken the country’s public health system. As a
start, simply to call up doctors and nurses in the
military reserves, as even Secretary of Defense Mark
Esper has
pointed out, would hurt
the broader civilian response to the pandemic. After
all, in their civilian lives many of them now work at
domestic hospitals and medical centers deluged by
Covid-19 patients.
The
present situation, however, hasn’t stopped
military-industrial complex requests for bailouts. The
National Defense Industrial Association, a trade group
for the arms industry, typically asked the Pentagon to
speed up contracts and awards for
$160 billion in
unobligated Department of Defense funds to its
companies, which will involve pushing money out the door
without even the most modest level of due diligence.
Already
under fire in the pre-pandemic moment for grotesque
safety problems with its commercial jets, Boeing, the
Pentagon’s second biggest contractor, received $26.3
billion last year. Now, that company has asked for
$60 billion in
government support. And you undoubtedly won’t be
surprised to learn that Congress has already provided
Boeing with some of that desired money in its recent
bailout legislation.
According to the
Washington Post, $17 billion was carved out in that
deal for companies “critical to maintaining national
security” (with Boeing in particular in mind). When,
however, it became clear that those funds wouldn’t
arrive as a complete blank check, the company started to
have second thoughts. Now, some members of Congress are
practically
begging it to take the
money.
And
Boeing was far from alone. Even as the spreading
coronavirus
was spurring
congressional conversations about what would become a
$2 trillion relief
package,
130 members of the House
were already pleading for funds to purchase an
additional 98 Lockheed Martin F-35 jet fighters, the
most expensive weapons
system in history, at the cost of another half-billion
dollars, or the price of more than 90,000 ventilators.
Similarly, it should have been absurdly obvious that
this wasn’t the moment to boost already astronomical
spending on nuclear weapons. Yet this year’s defense
budget request for such weaponry was
20% higher than last year’s
and 50% above funding levels when President Trump took
office. The agency that builds nuclear weapons already
had
$8 billion left unspent
from past years and the head of the National Nuclear
Security Agency, responsible for the development of
nuclear warheads, admitted to Representative Susan Davis
(D-CA) that the agency was
unlikely even to be
able to spend all of the new increase.
Boosters
of such weapons, however, remain undeterred by the
Covid-19 pandemic. If anything, the crisis only seems to
have provided a further excuse to
accelerate the awarding
of an estimated $85 billion to Northrop Grumman to build
a new generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles
(ICBMs), considered the “broken
leg” of America’s
nuclear triad. As William Hartung, the director of the
Arms and Security Project at the Center for
International Policy, has
pointed out, such ICBMs
“are redundant because invulnerable submarine-launched
ballistic missiles are sufficient for deterring other
countries from attacking the United States. They are
dangerous because they operate on hair-trigger alert,
with launch decisions needing to be made in some cases
within minutes. This increases the risk of an accidental
nuclear war.”
And as
children’s book author Dr. Seuss might have
added, “But that is not
all! Oh, no, that is not all.” In fact, defense giant
Raytheon is
also getting its piece
of the pie in the Covid-19 moment for a $20-$30 billion
Long Range Standoff Weapon,
a
similarly redundant
nuclear-armed missile. It tells you everything you need
to know about funding priorities now that the company
is, in fact, getting that money two years ahead of
schedule.
In the
midst of the spreading pandemic, the U.S. military’s
Indo-Pacific Command similarly saw an opportunity to use
fear-mongering about China, a country officially in its
area of responsibility, to gain additional funding. And
so it is seeking
$20 billion that
previously hadn’t gained approval even from the
secretary of defense in the administration’s fiscal year
2021 budget proposal. That money would go to dubious
missile defense systems and a similarly dubious “Pacific
Deterrence Initiative.”
How Not
to Deal With Covid-19
Along
with those military-industrial bailouts came the
fleecing of American taxpayers. While many Americans
were
anxiously awaiting
their $1,200 payments from that congressional aid and
relief package, the Department of Defense was expediting
contract payments to the arms industry. Shay Assad, a
former senior Pentagon official, accurately
called it a “taxpayer
rip-off” that industries with so many resources, not to
speak of the ability to borrow money at incredibly low
interest rates, were being so richly and quickly
rewarded in tough times. Giving defense giants such
funding at this moment was like giving a housing
contractor 90% of upfront costs for renovations when it
was unclear whether you could even afford your next
mortgage payment.
Right now, the
defense industry is having similar success in persuading
the Pentagon that basic accountability should be tossed
out the window. Even in normal times, it’s a reasonably
rare event for the federal government to withhold money
from a giant weapons maker unless its performance is
truly egregious. Boeing, however, continues to fit that
bill perfectly with its endless program to build the
KC-46 Pegasus tanker, basically a “flying gas station”
meant to refuel other planes in mid-air.
As
national security analyst Mark Thompson, my colleague at
the Project on Government Oversight (POGO),
has pointed out, even
after years of development, that tanker has little hope
of performing its mission in the near future. The seven
cameras that its pilot relies on to guide the KC-46’s
fuel to other planes have so much glare and so many
shadows that the possibility of disastrously scraping
the stealth coating off F-22s and F-35s (both
manufactured by Lockheed Martin) while refueling remains
a constant danger. The Air Force has also become
increasingly concerned
that the tanker itself leaks fuel. In the pre-pandemic
moment, such problems and associated ones led that
service to decide to withhold $882 million from Boeing.
Now, however, in response to the Covid-19 crisis, those
funds are, believe it or not, being
released.
Keep all
of this behavior (and more) in mind when you hear people
suggest that, in this public health emergency, the
military
should be put in charge.
After all, you’re talking about the very institution
that has regularly mismanaged massive weapons programs
like the $1.4 trillion F-35 jet fighter program, already
the most expensive weapons system ever (with
ongoing problems
galore). Even when it comes to health care, the military
has proved remarkably inept. For instance, attempts of
the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of
Defense to integrate their health records were,
infamously enough,
abandoned after four
years and $1 billion spent.
Having
someone in uniform
at the podium is,
unfortunately, no guarantee of success. Indeed, a number
of veterans have been quick to rebuke the idea of
forefronting the military at this time. “Don’t put the
military in charge of anything that doesn’t involve
blowing stuff up, preventing stuff from being blown up,
or showing up at a place as a message to others that
we’ll be there to blow stuff up with you if need be,”
one
wrote.
“Here’s a
video from Camp Pendleton of unmasked Marines queued up
for haircuts during the pandemic,”
tweeted another. “So
how about 'no'?” That video of troops without masks or
practicing social distancing even shocked Secretary of
Defense Esper, who called for a military haircut halt,
only to be
contradicted by the
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, desperate to
maintain regulation cuts in the pandemic moment. That
inspired a
mocking rebuke of
“haircut heroes” on Twitter.
Unfortunately, as Covid-19 spread on the aircraft
carrier the USS Theodore Roosevelt, that ship
became emblematic of how ill-prepared the current
Pentagon leadership proved to be in combatting the
virus. Despite at least 100 cases being reported on
board --
955 crewmembers would,
in the end,
test positive for the
disease and Chief Petty Officer Charles Robert Thacker
Jr. would
die of it -- senior
Navy leaders were slow to respond. Instead, they kept
those sailors at close quarters and in an untenable
situation of
increasing risk. When
an emailed letter expressing the concerns of the ship’s
commander, Captain Brett Crozier, was leaked to the
press he was quickly
removed from command.
But while his bosses may not have appreciated his
efforts for his crew, his sailors did. He left the ship
to a
hero’s farewell.
All of
this is not to say that some parts of the U.S. military
haven’t tried to step up as Covid-19 spreads. The
Pentagon has, for instance,
awarded contracts to
build “alternate care” facilities to help relieve
pressure on hospitals. The Uniformed Services University
of the Health Sciences is
allowing its doctors and nurses
to join the military early. Several months into this
crisis, the Pentagon has finally
used the Defense
Production Act to launch a process to produce $133
million worth of crucial N95 respirator masks and
$415 million worth of
N95 critical-care decontamination units. But these are
modest acts in the midst of a pandemic and at a moment
when bailouts, fraud, and delays suggest that the
military-industrial complex hasn’t proved capable of
delivering effectively, even for its own troops.
Meanwhile, the Beltway bandits that make up that complex
have spotted a remarkable opportunity to secure many of
their hopes and dreams. Their success in putting their
desires and their profits ahead of the true national
security of Americans was already clear enough in the
staggering pre-pandemic
$1.2 trillion national
security budget. (Meanwhile, of course, key federal
medical structures were
underfunded or
disbanded in the Trump
administration years, undermining the actual security of
the country.) That kind of disproportionate spending
helps explain why the richest nation on the planet has
proven so incapable of providing even the necessary
personal protective equipment for frontline healthcare
workers, no less the
testing needed to make
this country safer.
The
defense industry has asked for, and received, a lot in
this time of soaring cases of
disease and death.
While there is undoubtedly a role for the giant weapons
makers and for the Pentagon to play in this crisis, they
have shown themselves to be anything but effective lead
institutions in the response to this moment. It’s time
for the military-industrial complex to truly pay back an
American public that has been beyond generous to it.
Isn’t it
finally time as well to reduce the “defense” budget and
put more of our resources into the real national
security crisis at hand?
Mandy
Smithberger, a
TomDispatch regular,
is the director of the Center
for Defense Information at the Project On Government
Oversight
(POGO).
Follow
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and Tom Engelhardt's
A Nation Unmade by War,
as well as Alfred McCoy's
In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and
Decline of U.S. Global Power
and John Dower's
The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World
War II.
Copyright 2020
Mandy Smithberger
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