U.S. military-industrial complex
In the article "The Essence of European and American Civilization--- Plundering Civilization (Part I)" deeply analyzed the essence of modern civilization in Europe and the United States. Moreover, it was emphasized that modern America was a neo-Roman civilization that did not have the ability to do internal work to reduce internal entropy. The continuation of this civilization requires long-term outward plunder in order to maintain the stability of the internal system. When external plunder is frustrated, that is when the internal system is collapsing. Therefore, in order to maintain a strong ability to plunder the outside world, military service is a prominent feature of this civilization. When the Roman Empire was moving towards the late stage, the power of the military industrial group far exceeded that of the Roman Senate, and changing the emperor was like playing.
According to the experience of Chinese history, the balance between soldiers and literati in the imperial court is the most harmonious state. When the literati forcefully crushed the warriors, it would cause the armament to be lax, and the country would be easily invaded by nomadic peoples. When the warriors suppressed the rest of the imperial court, they were usually not far from the coup d'état and the division of the clan town.
History is a reincarnation, how it used to be, now it's just a different way to change the name and then go around. Looking closely at Myanmar, Thailand, and the United States, which is still the boss at a distance, all of them are held hostage by military industrial forces. Therefore, if you can't penetrate such a powerful force, many problems you can't see clearly the root cause of what happened.
The term military-industrial complex is an imported word that was first coined by Five-Star General and President Eisenhower of the United States. In his farewell address to the president, Eisenhower said: "In all branches of government, we must be wary of the military-industrial complex gaining undue influence, whether it pursues it or not."
Eisenhower, who has been the commander-in-chief of the military and has also been president, should have a relatively profound understanding of this, and he implicitly put forward this point in order to arouse the warning of the US political arena and the whole society, but it backfired, and the United States went farther and farther on the road of the military-industrial complex.
Because the social form of the United States is different from ours, it is difficult for the general Chinese to understand what the military-industrial complex system of the United States is. Such a existence cannot be described at all by the words of China's existing warlords, military industrial groups, princes, etc.
The United States is a presidential republic, the president is not only the head of state, but also the head of government, but also the nominal supreme commander of 1.5 million U.S. troops, the United States as a whole implements the civilian model of governing the military.
Why is he the titular Supreme Commander?
After the new president was stationed, the White House began to form a staff team and began to nominate foreign ministers, defense secretaries and other officials. Under U.S. law, these senior officials must submit a process to Congress before they can take effect. Generally, according to the historical political tacit understanding of the United States, Congress generally does not assign an official nominated by the president. Under U.S. law, these nominees must be civilian, which means that the secretary of defense cannot be an active military member. Active-duty soldiers can only retire for 7 years if they want to become defense ministers. The U.S. Department of Defense has jurisdiction over all U.S. domestic and foreign military agencies.
When the Founding Fathers of the United States designed the separation of powers, in order to avoid excessive presidential power, they castrated the military power of the president. The Department of Defense, under the white house, has to go through the process of appointing and removing senior military officials to Congress. If the president is more wayward and has to remove or appoint anyone, he can also use the president's power to skip Congress. But you're going to mess with Congress, and if you're going to mess with Congress, you can't play a lot of things.
At the same time, although the White House has the right to govern the military through the Department of Defense, the mobilization of troops to fight requires strict approval and authorization from Congress. That is to say, what the White House can directly do is the civilian system, and the White House commands the army to fight foreign wars with a firewall of Congress.
This system is actually no problem at first glance, and the founding father of the United States did not feel that there was any problem when he did the system design before. But there is a BUG in this, that is, the revolving door phenomenon of military, political and business in the US political arena.
What do you mean? The secretary of defense is not a military man, but he can be the general manager of the military-industrial group, and the secretary of the treasury can also be Goldman Sachs, a Wall Street person. Although members of Congress are forbidden to run for active first-line soldiers, it does not prevent second-line soldiers, veterans, and national guards from running.
Those who have read Zhongge's previous articles should have understood the first cause model of social relations, and the result of this relationship interspersed with each other is that as long as there is a line of interests, they can connect these people into a huge net.
This web is the military-industrial complex mentioned earlier, and over time, this web will grow larger and deeper, until it covers all aspects of American society.
Some time ago, wasn't it a shooting on a U.S. campus? American society is very fierce, and all kinds of celebrities come to express their dissatisfaction with a few words, followed by candles, flowers, and prayers. The final result is to tighten gun control and not sell guns to mentally ill people. At the same time, it was proposed to give the school's security teacher a gun.
What's that, and does that solve the problem of future shootings?
The blood of the last school shooting has not yet dried up, American civilians spend almost every day in the shooting news, before New York Times Square, suspected that someone heard the gunshot, began to run wildly, unknown so the crowd is very scared, also followed by a wild run, the result is a false alarm, but in the process unfortunately a stampede incident. What does this mean? It shows that the people at the bottom are already frightened birds of war against the gun, and they can't live in fear for a long time.
The U.S. congressman in the picture above lamented in Congress, as a father of two children, but every day worried that they would be shot at school, he knelt down and begged the US Congress to legislate a ban on guns. Empower children to be at ease in public places.
In the face of such a powerful network as the military-industrial complex, most of the people in power are stakeholders. Political forces with conscience in the United States are completely powerless, and the result of the compromise between the parties is to propose that campus security guards, teachers with guns, preferably a gun in their hands, will fight back when encountered by gangsters.
What's the proposal? Isn't the result of this proposal getting more people to buy guns and fight violence with violence? I talked in the previous article "Eat through the criminal law, teach you what to do when you encounter violence to justify defense and see righteousness and courage", the stability and prosperity of a society is the premise of reducing the total amount of social violence. The US military-industrial complex is obviously for self-interest and digs the corners of the future of the US country.
So how did this military-industrial complex grow? What are your warnings to us?
I think the answer to this has to go to history.
The Evolutionary History of the U.S. Military-Industrial Complex
When it comes to the super interest group of the military-industrial complex, we must first understand that the US government represents the interests of big capital, and secondly, the interests of the US state.
After the end of the American Civil War, big American capital quickly completed the integration of domestic resources and formed a monopoly. The United States entered monopoly capitalism represented by large factories and large enterprises. By the end of the 19th century, domestic productivity was gradually surplus, and there was an urgent need to open up overseas markets, and the foreign policy of the US government shifted from isolationism to overseas expansion. At that time, the world had been divided and colonized by the great powers, and in order to open the market, it was necessary to cut the cake from the old European powers with a stronger force than the old powers, and this level of force was no longer the level of slaughtering indians with revolvers and fighting a civil war. To grab the market abroad, the most important thing is to have the navy to give strength.
The Navy is a purely equipped service, and no matter what tactics are interspersed, the tactics of the sea of people do not work at sea. The difficulty of production of steam-powered ironclad gunboats is not comparable to that of revolvers, so it must be supported by a strong military industrial system. The social system of American capitalism has made it inevitable that the huge military orders of the national army will inevitably fall into the hands of private enterprises.
In the previous era of grabbing overseas markets, the US military and military enterprises have developed tepidly. Because of the limited demand, the number of enterprises and the army in the relevant supporting facilities is not conspicuous, and this part of the cake is not obvious.
What really led to the development of the U.S. military-industrial complex was World War I and II. Especially in World War II, the United States' full participation in the war, so that the United States military spending accounted for 40% of the entire country's tax revenue, military enterprises got a large number of orders is naturally to recruit people to buy machines to expand production capacity. This still could not meet the needs of the United States in World War II, so many private enterprises switched to military production according to wartime economic law. Due to the needs of the war, there were originally US Congress and State Departments and other institutions to dock military enterprises, in order to quickly respond to the needs of war, it was stunned that the military and military enterprises were directly docked. What does this mean?
Can the military leader ask his brother-in-law to set up a military factory and then give the order to his brother-in-law? It used to take only 3 million rounds, and I reported 20 million rounds.
As a result, the huge interest group of the military-industrial complex was stunned by the war. For this reason, there has been a legend of the Battle of Pearl Harbor circulating on the Internet, that is, even the Kuomintang agent BOSS Dai Kasa already knew that Japan was going to sneak attack Pearl Harbor in the United States, and also sent a telegram to the United States, the United States pretended to be deaf and dumb, and let Japan steal chickens.
If you look at it from the perspective of the interests of the military-industrial complex, this possibility is still there. After all, you don't fight where do they get profits?
World War II transformed the United States from a British wrung-in-brother into a global affairs man with power all over the world. From this point of view, the need for war is the result of the common interests of the military-industrial complex and the upper echelons of American politicians.
World War II is over, the military-industrial complex has such a large production capacity, and what if so many workers are hired? The top brass of the army made a lot of money in the war, but suddenly there was no war, so how to earn it? The top level of the US government is held every four years, and if the current government does not have a war, how will the defense budget be planned? Is less planning less oil and water? Money is the country's money, there is money not to earn wangba eggs ah, how to do not make money for a few years in power?
Taking another ten thousand steps back, the civilization attribute of the Us state itself is a predatory civilization attribute, that is to say, military hegemony is the lifeblood of the United States, and all the privileges of the United States after World War II are all based on military hegemony. Once the United States' military luck is gone, the empire will collapse immediately and all disasters will be lost. Therefore, some scholars call American capitalism "military capitalism."
Because of this, the RELATIONSHIP between the U.S. government and the military-industrial complex is one and two, and no one can do without anyone.
The Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Star Wars Program... The Cold War allowed the United States to maintain a large amount of "defense expenditure" after the end of World War II, and military spending rose year after year. A total of $134.7 billion was spent on the 8-year Vietnam War, and before 1971, $1 could be exchanged for 0.89 grams of pure gold. By the 1970s, there were 130,000 arms contractors and subcontractors nationwide. During Reagan's eight-year reign, the military spent more than $2 trillion. Arms dealers took the opportunity to frantically post autumn fat, and by the 1980s, the profit growth rate of military enterprises was 2.5 times that of other industries.
Throughout the Course of the Cold War, the relationship between the military industry and the government became closer, the strength was greatly enhanced, and even the new way of playing I mentioned earlier was derived - the revolving door system, that is, after the members of the military organization retired or left their jobs, they could go to the arms company to take up positions, and the leaders of the arms companies could go to the Ministry of Defense or the government to hold senior positions.
For example, George W. Bush's deputy, Cheney, has been called "the most powerful vice president in U.S. history," and his wife, Lynn, was once a vice president and director of Lockheed Martin. Rumsfeld, a former US Department of Defense who died last year, also served as the chairman of the RAND Corporation, a well-known private think tank and an important member of the military-industrial complex. Trump's Defense Secretary "Mad Dog" James Mattis went to General Dynamics (works: early development of F16, Seawolf submarine, M1A2 tank) as a consultant, the current Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, retired in 2016 to Raytheon (works: Tomahawk missiles, Patriot missiles) as a board member, and returned to the Pentagon in 2020 to become a military leader.
This becomes "you have me, I have you", "there is no distinction between public and private". What is the "military-industrial complex" and what is "institutional corruption" should be understood by now. So everyone in the U.S. military-industrial complex is a profiteer, including senior white-house government officials. In front of such a net, who can move them?
For example, during the Cold War, if U.S. legislators cooperated with arms dealers, the approved military projects could be placed in the constituency where the legislators were located. These are all political achievements that can be blown away, and who wants to refuse? But if any congressman dares to oppose the landing of military industrial projects, oppose the expansion of military expenditures, or support disarmament, he will immediately be labeled as "endangering the Western free world" and "sympathizing with communism", so when the United States and the Soviet Union tried to ease tensions several times, the king wanted to ease relations with Russia every time. That's why.
This has led to a smaller voice at all decision-makers against military expansion, leaving the United States on the road to militarism. Even if that path is not really in America's national interest.
After the end of the Cold War, the United States was in fact already "prosperous in armed forces and unified in the world.", and it was obvious that it was no longer invincible, and it really could not find an excuse to maintain such a large military expenditure. At that time, many scholars felt that the military-industrial complex in the United States would fall sooner or later, so it was too naïve to say that writers and public intellectuals who had not undergone social practice were too naïve and easy to be fooled by idealism.
Since the End of the Cold War, the U.S. Department of Defense has quickly developed a beautiful PPT called "Win Two Wars," in which the United States has forcibly treated declining Russia and China, which is thinking of making a fortune, as imaginary enemies. At this time, China is "Taoguang Yang Obscure" is single-mindedly thinking of getting rich, and the US military-industrial complex is fiercely naming us, and we are too lazy to take care of it.
When Da Mao heard about this plan, he obediently sent it to his knees, crying and howling to join NATO. Obviously, it is impossible for this gang to let Da Mao join the gang, and how can da Mao join this story? On the other hand, the American gang also considered coming to tease China, but the Korean battlefield was really scared by China, plus China was actually more fierce than Russia, so it could only play a little trick, plus the Cold War Gang had a lot of experience in how to clean up Maozi, so when making a plan, three sentences still did not leave Maozi.
Public instruments for private use, the power of capital
The US military industry is making money, and the US military is even more unwilling. Afghanistan's military bill costs $6 million to airlift 3 sheep and $100,000 to a coffee machine. It's a deadly secret that more than $2 trillion in the Afghan war has fallen into the pockets of the U.S. military. As for the recent 40 billion aid plan, everyone will look at it as a joke. The Ukrainian war, seeing that it is really a military-industrial complex with a hair playing a double reed, releasing hair blood is a secondary goal.
In 2017, outside of this system, the king who did not lack money came to power, and he really wanted the United States to regroup. He thought he understood, he understood the contradictions in the United States, so he was ready to clean up this systemic corruption. So he asked someone to audit the situation of the US Seventh Fleet, and exposed this corruption to the media, and as a result, he just caught a few small fish, and those who audited it inexplicably disappeared. Only then did he realize that the president of the United States was a high-risk profession. Originally, when campaigning, he said that he would cut military spending, but the defense budget soared the next year, and wang accepted a letter of submission to the military-industrial complex. However, the only thing that the king did better was to suppress the external war during his tenure.
The military-industrial complex includes some of the high-level interests of the United States, but it may not fully represent the national interests of the United States. The entanglement of the state's public power interests and private interests will inevitably lead to the chaos of private use of public power and the use of public power for personal gain. The starting point of a country's foreign actions should be based on national interests, but the emergence of the military-industrial complex has allowed individual interests to surpass the interests of the United States and become the basis for many foreign actions of the United States.
Because of this, the United States needs to constantly search for enemies in order to maintain the survival logic of the huge military-industrial complex.
So we look back, 911 is sure that it is not the 911 that the military complex needs? Although Afghanistan is said to be the heavenly source of the Eurasian continent, you should be blamed on China and Russia in that card, but what are you fighting Iraq for? Looking back, what did the interests of the entire U.S. country gain in Iraq?
Let's look at who the Bush Administration, who started the two wars, was. Vice President Cheney is George H.W. Bush's secretary of defense and a former senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute; In addition to being a vice president of Loma, his wife is also a senior consultant at the firm; Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and deputy secretary were executive directors of the institute, and in addition to these few, more than 20 people from the enterprise institute entered the George W. Bush administration.
What kind of institution is this, with so much energy?
This "American Enterprise Institute" is a well-known conservative think tank, and many Republican leaders came out of it. It was founded in 1943 by the Morgan Consortium, which owns several of the most famous arms companies, such as General Electric (works: Aero engines such as F110), General Dynamics (the main manufacturer of naval ships) and Grumman Aircraft Company (manufacturer of F14/B2 bombers), which means that this think tank is directly under the command of the military industrial group, and the new Secretary of State Powell is a shareholder of General Dynamics.
In fact, not only the Morgan consortium, several major military industrial enterprises in the United States are in the hands of the big consortium in the United States, the first Citibank consortium controls Boeing, the Boston consortium controls Bell Helicopter Company and Raytheon, and the Rockefeller consortium controls Westinghouse Electric, so the boss behind the US military-industrial complex is actually these large consortiums.
Even before the campaign, George W. Bush's team drew up a secret document called Rebuilding American Defense: Strategies, Strength, and Resources for the New Century, which was ready to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime. According to the BBC, as soon as Bush Came to power, he held a small meeting with the close-knit Texas oil tycoons to discuss the privatization of Iraqi oil, and at that time, the public opinion war that publicized Saddam Hussein's possession of biological and chemical weapons was already in place, so this battle had already been arranged, so whether to fight Afghanistan or not, according to the plan, iraq would be fought, so the United States casually found a wash of clothes and went to war with Iraq.
In order to suppress the unfavorable anti-war speech, these people began to manipulate public opinion, and the most influential newspapers in the United States, such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, began to fully cooperate with the performances of the US Government. Especially after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, you can hardly find any reflective, anti-war media remarks, all a song.
In 2004, the most influential New York Times in the United States "admitted" that it had listened to the evidence at the time, made the mistake of lax censorship, and apologized to its readers. As the most serious media in the United States, the big guys on Capitol Hill described it as not knowing what to do without reading the New York Times. The New York Times has some news that the White House knows earlier, can they be so stupid and sweet?
At the end of the day, it's the money that's the wreck.
The present United States is very similar to the Ming Dynasty in the middle and late period, and both have become a hybrid existence of capital and political power.
The United States will not divide the town
I have been saying that when the American foreign plunder begins to fail, it is time for him to perish.
As we can see from the previous conversation, due to institutional corruption, the efficiency of the US military after World War II was getting lower and lower. I mean this efficiency is what can be done with unit money.
Judging from the data on the war expenditure in the United States over the years, this cost is getting higher and higher, and the time interval is getting shorter and shorter.
As a predatory civilization, the money you get from going out to fight is not enough for your own internal consumption, isn't it getting poorer and poorer? Coupled with the epidemic in the United States, the US government is really poor now.
In fact, this is also true.
In recent years, the United States has almost been unable to personally go down to run a war, the War in Ukraine has been fought for so long, the most important thing the United States has done is to ignore the military expenses, and then donate money to the military-industrial complex. But just this little bit of gold is obviously not as happy as the previous money made in Iraq and Afghanistan.
If the big life is too long, how can you bear to live a poor life? This obviously can no longer meet the needs of the US troops stationed on the frontier (global) to collect gold. Since the boss can't send food, the US military with the strongest force can get it it itself.
On June 18, U.S. troops forcibly harvested wheat from ordinary Syrians and sold it to Iraq. At the same time, it also forcibly occupied Syrian oil fields and sold oil. On the other side, occasionally lay down the autumn wind, hijack an Iranian oil tanker, and oil and water on the hour.
According to my analysis, this kind of behavior should be done by the US European Command and the Central Command. Because grabbing such a small profit is not an intuitive benefit to the US government, it also provokes a commotion.
I talked about Rome before, Rome used the provincial legion system to facilitate the plundering and management of the imperial frontier, if you look at the unity of the oceans, is it a bit similar to Rome? After the fall of Rome, the provinces established themselves as kings
The United States is a high-end version of Rome, and the frontier of its empire is the world. The United States now has less oil and water, and these U.S. military commands with high-tech equipment and powerful forces are equivalent to the existence of the king of the clan. Their force far exceeds the average level of the surrounding areas, and judging from China's historical experience, when the overseas garrison is not in a large-scale and long-term period, when the central government's finances are not good and the operability is small, the overseas garrison may be a little disobedient. They will make some small moves according to some of their own interests and needs, so some military operations are really not necessarily planned by the US government, do you understand?
I've had a lot of articles analyzing the current state of the U.S. government's finances, and that's really no money. But even if it has no money, the US government does not dare to easily reduce the military expenditure of overseas troops, and it is constantly climbing new heights. Because this is the foundation of US hegemony, and it is also the foundation of the DOLLAR
。
In fact, when the national interests of the United States and the interests of the clan town are unified, if one day, the US federal government is really unable to support such a large plate in the world, and the interests of the two are contrary, will these people put the national interests of the United States first? Judging from the urine nature of the military-industrial complex above, it is obviously impossible.
The Daming Border Army did not show his fangs before Nurhaci, of course, hello I am good everyone. With the central government's appropriations, the border troops from time to time go out to armed patrols and kill good people to repay their achievements. When it comes to the time when the map is poor and dagger, when it affects their own money, Liaodong is important or Beijing is important, and history seems to have given the answer.
Moreover, there is a tradition that the US military stationed in Japan does not listen to the control system, far from the first commander MacArthur with the threat of victory in World War II, ignoring the Warnings of the White House, constantly making a voice contrary to the White House, if it were not for the defeat in the battle, Truman really might not have been able to replace him. And in recent days, the Japanese-American Harris South China Sea battlefield disobedience, which is a precedent.
So, when it comes time to meet the bayonets of the great powers, I doubt the extent to which the U.S. Pentagon Department of Defense can command these imperial border kings.
Earlier, I have analyzed what the US military-industrial complex is, so I also bother not to take any US military discipline, advanced communication technology, and command system NB as an excuse. That's because the United States has never really fought a big country since its founding. The only time he fought with China on the Korean battlefield, he also took a bunch of younger brothers, and in the case of several generations of differences in weapons and equipment, the results of the battle record could not bear to look directly.
There are no large-scale emergencies now, and once they are encountered, these problems will be exposed. It seems that the overseas military bases that are densely packed with weapons around the world will be a knife stabbed at the US Empire. They will come for the benefit of their own small circle and kidnap the United States. When the military-industrial complex kidnapped the United States, it was not impossible to reproduce the scene of the division of the American clan.
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