The
Wrong Kind Of Victory
By
Dmitry Orlov
March 19, 2016
"Information
Clearing House"
- "ClubOrlov
"-
One often
hears of the fact that the US spends more on its
military than most other nations combined. This is
usually presented as evidence that the US is more
powerful militarily—perhaps so powerful that it
could take on the rest of the planet, and prevail. I
find this attitude highly questionable. If we look
at what sort of “defense” the US actually spends
money on, and what it gets in return in terms of
military capabilities, an entirely different picture
emerges: of a corruption-riddled blundering
leviathan that is thwarting its own purpose at every
turn.
To start with, assessing relative military strength
based on relative levels of military spending is a
lot like betting on a race horse based on how much
the horse eats. Sure, horses have to eat, but a
horse that eats ten times more than all the other
horses is probably not going to come out ahead
because there is something seriously wrong with it.
Then consider the fact that a dollar spent on the US
military in the US is not directly comparable to a
dollar's worth of rubles or yuan spent on in Russia
or China; in terms of purchasing parity, the ratios
can be 5 to 1, or even 10 to 1. If Russia gets 10
times the bang for the buck, there goes the
assumption of supposed US military superiority based
on how much the US military eats.
Also, let's not lose track of the fact that the US
military has different objectives from the rest of
the world's militaries: its goal is primarily
offensive rather than defensive. The US military
strives to dominate and subjugate the entire planet;
everyone else simply tries to defend their
territory, while a few countries also try to thwart
the US military in its ambition to dominate and
subjugate the entire planet.
In general, if the objective is unrealistic, it
doesn't matter how much money is wasted in trying to
achieve it. More specifically, it's a lot cheaper to
break something than to make something work, and the
US military, no matter how much money is spent on
it, remains quite cheap to neutralize. For instance,
a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier costs somewhere
around $5 billion, while a Russian Kaliber missile
that can be launched from a fishing boat from 1200
km away and destroy it is competitively priced at
$1.2 million apiece. To put these numbers in
perspective, Russia can wipe out the entire US
aircraft carrier fleet without exceeding its
military training budget for the year.
But all of this matters only if the US actually
spends money in trying to achieve some actual
military objective. If the US military establishment
mostly wastes its money on vanity projects and
expensive technological albatrosses, then none of
this matters at all, and this may very well be the
case. Just look at what the US actually spends its
defense dollars on:
• It spends it on military bases around the
world—hundreds of them. What purpose do they serve?
What does their presence achieve? Nobody knows. It's
all part of US military “activity”: assessing and
responding to “threats,” most of which are purely
theoretical. It seems to have an irrational
compulsion to not leave any spots on the planet
without a US military base. This is mostly just a
waste of resources.
• It spends it on a bunch of aircraft carrier
groups. These are very useful for launching attacks
on defenseless countries. But it is very important
to keep these aircraft carriers outside of conflict
zones that may involve China or Russia, or even
Iran, because each of these countries has several
cost-effective ways to destroy an aircraft carrier:
ballistic missiles, supersonic cruise missiles and
supersonic torpedoes. The entire aircraft carrier
fleet is obsolete, and is another huge waste of
money.
• It spends it on the Aegis integrated naval combat
system, which is considered state-of-the-art and has
been installed on a number of cruisers and
destroyers. There is just one problem: it is trivial
to shut down, as Russia has demonstrated. A jet
fighter equipped with a basket of electronic
countermeasures equipment called Khibiny was used to
shut down Aegis. The jet (which was otherwise
unarmed) then performed a dozen bombing runs on the
defenseless US navy vessel.
• It spends it on disastrous development programs of
various kinds. A classic example is Ronald Reagan's
Strategic Defense Initiative, a.k.a. “Star Wars”: it
never resulted in anything strategically useful.
Another good example is the F-35 Joint Strike
Fighter, which cost over a trillion dollars to
develop. It is supposed to be useful for a lot of
different missions, but has turned out to be
ineffective for all of them.
This list can be continued virtually ad infinitum,
but just these examples make clear a basic
principle: spending money on things that don't work
does not make the US any stronger militarily.
Next, look at the manner in which the US spends
money on defense. It spends it by paying military
contractors, which are public companies—highly
profitable ones. These defense contractors are not
primarily interested in delivering value in terms of
defense spending; they are interested in generating
profits for their shareholders. This is the stated
prime directive of all public companies. Therefore,
it is safe to write off a good third of all defense
spending which goes toward profits: this money may
feather a lot of nests, but none of that is
military-related.
Also, keep in mind that much of the money is
actually just pretty much stolen. The Pentagon has
not been audited in decades, and sums unaccounted
for run into the billions of dollars. A great deal
of defense-related spending is recycled using a
variety of schemes into campaign contributions for
members of US Congress, whose members then
unfailingly vote for increased defense spending.
There is also the scheme where defense contractors
pay exorbitant consulting fees to retired officers
in what is really a form of deferred compensation:
the officers work for the defense contractors
throughout their careers, but are only paid after
they retire. Nobody knows what fraction of defense
spending gets siphoned off using these or any number
of other corrupt schemes, but it seems likely that
the US military establishment is the single largest
den of corruption that this planet has ever seen.
The little bit of money that might eventually get
spent on developing useful defense systems runs into
a truly insurmountable problem: lack of brains. You
see, for generations now the US has been falling
behind in science and math, along with almost
everything else. There are some excellent
universities and institutes in the US that graduate
top-notch technical specialists, but they mostly
graduate foreigners. At the graduate level in
science and engineering, US nationals are a small
minority.
Now, this doesn't matter in many technical fields,
where it is common practice in the US to hire
foreign-born specialists. But defense is special: it
requires native talent, or the allegiance, and the
morale for doing superior work, simply isn't there.
And so the defense contractors end up being staffed
by native-born knuckle-draggers who couldn't get a
job that wasn't defense-related. In turn, the
Department of Defense is staffed by similarly dim
bulbs: highly caffeinated fitness freaks who run
around looking busy, waiting for their next
promotion, never criticizing their superiors, never
questioning their orders no matter how idiotic they
are, and never thinking too hard. What can a system
like that achieve? Disasters, that's what.
And so that's what we see: a long sequence of
unmitigated military disasters. The US has been
involved in a long series of military campaigns
against very weak adversaries, in which it proved
itself capable of destruction, with staggering
levels of collateral damage, and some very
impressive unintended consequences such as the
emergence of ISIS/Daesh/Islamic Caliphate, but not
much else.
Critically, it has turned out to be utterly
incapable of winning the peace. The ultimate
objective of all military missions is cessation of
hostilities on favorable terms. If this objective
cannot be achieved, then the military mission is
worse than useless. Has the US military been able to
achieve cessation of hostilities on favorable terms
in any of the countries in which it intervened
militarily—Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Syria,
the Ukraine? No, it certainly hasn't.
The US defense establishment can be considered
victorious in one sense only: it has conquered and
subdued the people of the United States, and is
extracting a plentiful tribute from them. It is a
pure parasite, serving no useful purpose. It should
be disbanded. As far as standing up to the
neighbors, the Texas National Guard should be a good
match to Mexico's Federales in case Mexico
decides to stage a military-style reconquista,
which is unlikely, since the de facto demographic
reconquista is going so well. On the other hand,
the northern border requires no protection it all,
since it is inconceivable that Canada would ever
pose any sort of military threat.
Of course, there is an alternative to voluntarily
disbanding the US military: a resounding,
humiliating military defeat at the hands of clever,
cost-conscious adversaries. However, this plan is
fraught with the danger of triggering a nuclear
exchange, and highly placed Americans who are
concerned that a nuclear explosion might interfere
with their personal longevity plans should give the
voluntary approach a good think.
P.S. Some people might find my criticism and
suggestions “unpatriotic” because we should all
“support our troops.” Rest assured, this has nothing
to do with the troops: they do not get to make
procurement decisions, and they do not get to choose
their missions. As far as as patriotism is
concerned, it is the sworn patriotic duty of the
troops to serve and protect the people, not the
other way around. But if you wish to be a patriot,
then you too can serve and protect the people, the
troops in particular (because, don't you forget,
they are people too) by bringing them home and
giving them civilian jobs doing something useful, or
at least something that isn't harmful to the world
at large or to the country's finances, environment,
health, reputation or security.
Dmitry
Orlov
was born in Leningrad and immigrated to the United
States in the 1970’s. He is the author of
Reinventing Collapse, Hold Your Applause! and
Absolutely Positive, and publishes weekly at the
phenomenally popular blog
www.ClubOrlov.com
. |