Rufus Polson
Jul 20, 2017 · 2 min read

There’s a core economic problem for the US military. The globalized capitalist order they are dedicated to enforcing is good for certain American elites who in broad terms control the military. But it is not good for the United States as a polity, as an economy at the national level. US-based multinationals are making wads of cash, but they are not making it by producing valuable things in the United States or by paying United States citizens good wages. The problem for the military and for those same elites in the long term is that the military IS based in the United States as a polity. US multinationals making out like gangbusters overseas does nothing for the tax base that pays for the US military. Even American billionaires in the US are pretty useless if they pay hardly any tax and employ hardly any Americans and don’t invest in manufacturing facilities and so forth on US soil. In short, if the elites pursue their short term benefit of sucking up all the money and leaving a third world national economy, they’ll be rich and all, but a third world national economy is not going to support a world-dominating military, and trying to make it even bigger in response to problems will just strain the tax base even more.

That said, this document, while interesting in its confirmations of tactical and moral myopia, probably exaggerates US collapse because it’s basically a begging letter — it’s an aggressive argument that no matter how obscenely large the military budget might be, it’s still really really important to make it even bigger. They do this all the time, it was an art form during the Cold War with all the phoney Missile Gaps and whatnot. They can’t very well say “Our land borders are with Canada and Mexico, Russia and China and even Middle East Muslims won’t hassle us if we stop hassling them, our interventions probably cost more money than they make, so really all we need is a decent navy and coast guard”. Where would their perks be then?

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    Rufus Polson

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