CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

The Sordid Politics of Defense Spending

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

The mainstream media argues that increased spending on defense in peacetime is predicated on military necessity and military objectives.  In actual fact, the major increases in defense spending that I have studied relate to political and economic requirements, having very little to do with military requirements.

I was on the faculty of the National War College in 1998, when key congressional Republicans and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Hugh Shelton, invited President Bill Clinton to the college for a “closed-door briefing” on new requirements for military procurement and military pay.  Over the previous six years, Clinton had been an easy mark for the Pentagon because he typically yielded to the political right-wing leaders of the Congress (e.g., Rep. Newt Gingrich and Senator Jesse Helms) as well as to the military brass on defense spending and on opposition to such important arms control and disarmament issues as the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention.

Clinton was particularly vulnerable regarding military demands in 1998 because of his sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky, particularly his many lies about that relationship.  Clinton was never a favorite among my military students at the war college.  They were particularly........

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