America’s aggressive military-industrial complex
It appears that the military-industrial complex has complete control of the government of the United States, which recently voted to give the Pentagon roughly a trillion dollars of the tax-payers money. This was done by cutting back on social programs which would have helped poor working families.
Recently Joan Roelofs published a book entitled “The Trillion Dollar Silencer: Why There Is So Little Anti-War Protest in the United States” (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2022). In this book, she points out that the U.S. military-industrial complex has located military bases in regions where the local economy is entirely dependent on them. The vast river of money flowing into the pockets of the military-industrial complex implies that very many people earn their living, directly, or indirectly, from the manufacture or use of weapons.
Why is there bipartisan support for sending many billions of dollars’ worth of advanced weaponry to Ukraine, thus gradually escalating the war into an extremely dangerous proxy war between Russia and the United States together with its NATO allies? The great danger is that the escalation of the conflict will result in nuclear war. However, politicians from both U.S. political parties are so blinded by nationalism that they believe the risks to be necessary in order to “weaken Russia”, thus asserting American global hegemony.
The U.S. Anti-China campaign
As if the proxy war with Russia were not enough, the U.S. government, driven by the greed of the military-industrial complex, has begun to threaten a war with China. Here are some links that report on the recent anti-China campaign, and the unprovoked threats to China:
- U.S. Admits Weather Pushed Chinese Balloon Off Course, U.S. Shot Down Hobbyists’ $12 Balloon in $2M Missile Attack
- Pentagon Prepares for Island Combat in the Pacific as US-China Tensions Rise
- US Is Maintaining Tensions With North Korea to Draw in Allies Against China
- At the Brink of War in the Pacific? The Nightmare of Great Power Rivalry Over Taiwan
- We must stop the march towards World War III, now!
- The Context Of The New Anti-China Campaign
- John Menadue: The US sees China through the dark mirror of its own unbridled aggression
- Biden’s Chip War With China Is an Imperial Struggle for High-Tech Supremacy
- What We Know about the US Air Force’s Balloon Party So Far
- Balloons and UFOs aside, war with China is not inevitable
- Why The US Seeks War With China By 2025
- The US Is Preparing Australia To Fight Its War Against China
- Protesters Disrupt House China Panel’s First Hearing
The threat of war, and actual war
To justify obscenely enormous government spending on weapons, the military-industrial complex does not need actual war – only the threat of war. But threats can lead to actual war, even if no one wants it, as we should have learned from the outbreak of World War I.
The threat of nuclear war
Reading the discussion in the links above, one finds no mention of the fact that the United States and China are both nuclear armed nations. A war between the U.S. and China is visualized as a conventional war (which, by the way, the United States certainly could not win). However, a war between two nuclear-armed nations inevitably exposes the world to the danger of a catastrophic nuclear war, in which a large proportion of its humans, animals and plants would perish. We cannot afford to take this risk.
Cooperation rather than competition
Instead at aiming at global hegemony through military power, and regarding China as a competitor, and hence an enemy, the United States should cooperate with China, arranging exchanges and conferences in science, engineering, economics and climate mitigation.
Many of my freely downloadable books can be found at the following web addresses
http://eacpe.org/about-john-scales-avery/
