Sergio Rodríguez Gelfenstein*, Prensa Latina employee
The initiative is now being considered by the House of Representatives. The document includes spending such as the purchase of ships, ammunition and aircraft, as well as military aid to Ukraine and measures to combat China's influence in the Pacific. However, this number is incorrect as it is actually much higher.
For decades, independent researchers have claimed that actual U.S. military spending is about twice as high as officially recognized. In 2022, actual U.S. military spending reached $1.537 billion, doubling the publicly reported $877 billion. This data comes from figures from the United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
But they face a trap because they suffer from two important deficiencies. First, the “defense spending” figures provided by the OMB are substantially lower than the figures provided in the United States' National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA), the country's most complete and unambiguous source of income and government spending to date, the overall basis of the analysis American economy.
Second, important areas of U.S. military spending are known to be included in other parts of federal spending and do not fall into OMB's “defense spending” category. To this amount we would have to add the federal government's space spending and the actual total amount of subsidies to foreign countries. Military health insurance (which consists of payments for medical services provided to dependents of active-duty military personnel at non-military installations) should also be considered.
According to a study for the magazine Monthly Review by Gisela Cernadas, an economist at the National University of La Plata in Argentina, and John Bellamy Foster, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Oregon in the United States, these figures should also include benefits, living insurance and other costs for veterans, military health insurance, military space shares, expenditures, grants to other governments and the share of net interest attributable to actual federal military expenditures.
In any case, reported military spending by the United States is three times that of China ($292 billion) and ten times that of Russia ($86.4 billion). In fact, US military spending is almost equal to that of the ten countries following in the table, including Russia, China and India, its NATO allies, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy, as well as Japan and Korea South and Ukraine. Taking into account the data that I mentioned in the first part of this work, it is not expenditure that measures the efficiency of the armed forces on the planet. In the case of the United States, such a situation also has a different perspective, considering that defense production is the main component of its ailing economy. In this way, increasing its military spending and pressuring its allies to emulate it are directly related to the need to protect the country's economic potential and stability.
In a way that waging war or creating conflict meets a vital need of the North American nation. Peace is seen as the enemy of its economy. This emerges from the testimony of James O'Brien, Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, during a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on funding for Ukraine, who admitted that the armed conflict in that country suggests this. O'Brien explained: “The fight for Ukraine also allows us to revitalize our own industrial base.” We are developing new energy technologies and putting them into practice around the world. “We are building new defense technologies.”
This statement is consistent with reports that military orders to Ukraine have increased revenues for major U.S. defense companies such as Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Raytheon Technologies Corporation (RTX), Boeing and Northrop Grumman.
It was President Joe Biden himself who confirmed O'Brien's assessment. In urging Congress to approve a war aid budget for Ukraine and Israel, the president used the same argument as his official, revealing what had been a “secret” of the country: its economy's significant dependence on the wars. In this regard, Biden was even clearer than O'Brien: “We have sent equipment to Ukraine that is in our arsenals. And when we use the money approved by Congress, we use it to replenish our own reserves, our arsenals, with new equipment. Team defending America and made in America.” And he detailed: “…Patriot anti-aircraft battery missiles made in Arizona; Artillery ammunition is manufactured in 12 states across the country [incluyendo] Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas.”
For its part, the Wall Street Journal reports statements from Jason Aiken, chief financial officer of General Dynamics, who noted that the war in Ukraine has already increased demand for the company's products. Aiken noted that he believes “the situation in Israel will only put more pressure on this demand.” Likewise, William D. Hartung, senior researcher and specialist on the military-industrial complex at the Quincy Institute in Washington, explained that the nation's largest military contractors “would not exist without a steady flow of funding from the Pentagon.” And lest there be any doubt, he gave the example of Lockheed Martin, which generates 73 percent of its revenue through contracts with the United States government. He concluded his idea by stating that these were not capitalist companies in the traditional sense.
In this way, the macabre connection between war and economics that sustains the existence of the United States in its daily future was exposed with explicit authenticity. However, it must also demonstrate leadership to maintain its hegemony. In this sense, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin assured that today's problems would only “get worse” without “strong and firm” American leadership.
Austin, who joined the boards of Raytheon Technologies, Nucor and Tenet Healthcare after leaving active duty from the armed forces in 2016, regularly issues statements aimed at increasing revenue at the Military Industrial Complex. On December 2, during his speech at the Reagan National Defense Forum in California, he declared that “only one country on earth can provide the kind of leadership that this moment demands.” That country, in his opinion, was the United States.
This was the context in which Austin launched what he called “the modernization effort.” [de las fuerzas armadas] “The most ambitious project in almost 40 years,” consisting of an investment of approximately $50 billion in the defense industrial base. This will give the North American country an “ultimate strategic advantage that no competitor can match.” But as is becoming increasingly common among Washington's political leaders, this announcement could not have been made without the rhetoric that has characterized the imperial nation since its founding: “The United States Army is the deadliest fighting force in the history of mankind.” And we will continue like this. We must not give our friends, rivals and enemies any reason to doubt America's resolve.
Of course, Austin now speaks as an official and employee of major military contractors. The money made him forget his “military qualities” and now he expresses desires that reality denies. A single Russian hypersonic missile can shatter their dreams of greatness.
It is the American sources themselves who are responsible for refuting Secretary Austin's chimeras. Reading a draft of the first National Defense Industry Strategy, quoted by Politico on December 2, shows that the United States military-industrial complex (MIC) is struggling with speed and responsiveness to achieve this, which will enable China to be one step ahead.
The document points to the inability of the American industrial base to meet requirements at the required speed and scale. He adds that they would also be unable to “respond to a modern conflict with the speed, scale and flexibility required to meet the dynamic demands of a larger conflict.” Ukraine is in sight.
The report reveals the impossibility [del CMI] to produce the required weapons at the desired speed, which would create a mismatch that would pose a “strategic risk” to the United States as the country becomes embroiled in more and more conflicts, particularly in the “Indo-Pacific.”
According to the study, the Russian military operation in Ukraine and the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement have “unearthed other industrial requirements with corresponding risks” and made it clear that inadequate production and delivery capacity is now a deep-rooted problem at all levels Manufacturing supply chains.
So far this century, the United States Armed Forces have been involved in several wars and lost them all, although their military potential was only tested by the conflict in Ukraine. Overwhelming interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia and Libya were met with defeats, the destruction of countries and endless interventionist military presences that wore down Washington without achieving tangible results that would bring it strategic success.
In all cases, the United States drew its allies into confrontation with southern countries with low levels of development and limited economies. Nevertheless, a brief overview shows that they have not achieved any tangible victories in Central Asia, West Asia or Africa that could have changed the global balance of power in their favor.
But when Washington launched NATO against Russia, using Ukraine, it became clear that it was unable to achieve strategic victories. On the contrary, its economy has been weakened even further, its capacity for diplomatic maneuvers has been limited, the potential to create security and trust among its allies has diminished, and its usual means of pressure: blackmail, threats, arrogance and intimidation, have lost effectiveness in the face of increasing people's decision to take a different path.
The total military potential of the United States – which, as shown in this work, is still enormous – is not sufficient to wage and succeed in a major war. This equation, which advances under the shadow of hypersonic missiles and raises the specter of total destruction on the United States in the event of a nuclear war, could be a powerful tool that persuades decision-makers in Washington to move away from this assumption, thereby making it possible to achieve a strategic victory that certifies that “history is over” with the absolute dominance of capitalism and the United States on this planet.
That will no longer be possible.
rmh/srg
*Bachelor in International Studies, Master in International and Global Relations. Doctor of Political Science.
(Taken from selected signatures)