Military contracting "obscures where and how taxpayer money flows," and "makes it difficult to know how many people are employed, injured, and killed," said the Costs of War Project report's author.
NATO contractors openly embrace the crisis in Ukraine as sound business. In January, Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes cited “tensions in Europe” as an opportunity, saying, “I fully expect we’re going to see some benefit.”
Throughout history, "the most powerful, most heavily-armed countries, which had the best chances of emerging victorious in a military conflict, were usually the most eager for it."
On a planet in deep doo-doo, where the major powers should be cooperating big time, having a post-Trump administration so ready to return us to a Cold War-style world seems, to say the least, both a tad out of date and a bit reckless as well.
Mandy Smithberger & William D. Hartung
TomDispatch
New report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has outlined three different ways to cut $1 trillion in Department of Defense spending over the next decade. The options in the budget watchdog’s new report are anything but radical.
Will the United States and other nations survive these escalating preparations for nuclear war? In fact, the U.S. government and others are increasing the role that nuclear weapons play in their "national security" policies.
Robert Greenstein; Ryan Koronowski; Brett Samuels; Fred Kaplan
The President's budget is a reflection of the administration's priorities. And this administration and their GOP co-horts in Congress want to slash over a trillion dollars with cuts to programs for some of the nation's most vulnerable. A massive increase in the military budget and war preparations comes at the expense of slashing all kinds of social programs.
During the Cold War, the supposed threat of Communism was the justification for super-sized budgets and a continuous stream of wars and interventions-some overt, others covert or proxy-none of which had anything to do with defending the United States-and none of which ended in victory. These were sold to the American people as being fought to "defend freedom" or "support democracy." After the Cold War ended it became more difficult to justify such a massive military.
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