Column
The military-industrial complex just
marches on
By ROBERT F. DRINAN
When I read in early January that
President Clinton had agreed to support the Pentagons request for an
increase of some $125 billion over the next six years, I became certain that
the United States had failed to produce a new foreign policy for the world
after the Cold War.
All my anxieties and misgivings about U.S. foreign policy in the
six years of the Clinton administration coalesced into the conviction that the
United States had lost an unprecedented opportunity to fashion for the entire
world a policy that would relieve hunger, promote democracy and bring stability
to troubled regions.
Since the Warsaw Pact and world communism dissolved in 1990, the
entire human family has been looking to the United States for moral leadership
that could usher in a new era of peace.
The military has not rethought its goals since 1990. The one
review the Pentagon conducted resulted in the questionable finding that the
United States must be prepared to wage two regional wars at the same time. That
theory has never been approved by Congress following hearings or evaluated in
the crucible of public opinion.
It is self-evident that the world has changed radically since the
disappearance of the Soviet Union. The nations of the world do not need
military jets or sophisticated armaments; they need the skill and resources to
promote economic stability and make adequate provision for health and education
for their people.
America could help make that happen. Instead, the White House
chooses to invest the nations wealth in the largest boost in military
spending since the heyday of the Reagan buildup. The Air Force will be able to
buy more F-22 fighters, the Army can acquire new Comanche attack helicopters
and the Navy will build new ships.
In so doing, the president may have headed off a potentially
dangerous issue in the race for the White House in the year 2000. Vice
President Gore will not have to face charges of letting Americas guard
down. But meanwhile the opportunity to rethink the military policies of the
United States in a postcommunist world is slipping away.
For me, the concessions of 1999 to the Pentagon symbolize the
failure of the White House to engage Congress and the country in a fundamental
re-examination of what America should do as the human family struggles with
feeding, sheltering and keeping all its members safe.
The White House has rejected all the voices since 1990 that have
been pressing for new foreign policy priorities. Arms control experts,
activists and academics in the peace community and scores of religious
organizations feel spurned by Clinton as he agrees to go along with the
Pentagon with business as usual.
The Council for a Livable World and similar organizations get
regular assessments from military experts of what the United States needs to
deal with its current challenges. Their estimate is nowhere close to the $260
billion available to the Pentagon this year.
There certainly is no need for the entire world to be spending
$780 billion on arms this year.
The world scene has changed, but neither the White House nor the
Pentagon seems to have heard the good news. The military is still operating
with 80 percent of its Cold War budget and much the same attitude.
The military establishment in this country is awesome. It includes
1,396,000 men and women on active duty, 877,000 in the reserves and 747,000
full-time civilians. Imagine the impact if only a fraction of this vast armada
joined the 7,000 Peace Corps volunteers serving the poor in useful ways.
Supervision of the sprawling world of the Department of Defense
seems to be beyond even the Congress. There are 122 separate kinds of
accounting used by the Department of Defense -- so many that even the
Pentagons inspector general admits the need for reform. And although
there is every indication that the countrys military needs are shrinking,
the Pentagon asked Congress for 54 new slots for generals and admirals this
year.
It should also be remembered that the Pentagon resisted and
prevented Americas acceptance of the international ban on land mines
whose advocates captured last years Nobel Peace Prize. The Pentagon
blocked U.S. participation in the new International Criminal Court, a sort of
permanent Nuremberg Court, and it was the Pentagon that spent $35 billion in
1998 monitoring and maintaining some 12,500 nuclear warheads.
Opportunities to protest the latest surge in defense spending will
probably be minimal, since the administration and Congress usually push such
measures through as a matter of routine.
There is one sign of hope. Dale Bumpers, longtime arms control
advocate, took office Jan. 4 as the new director of the Center for Defense
Information. After 24 years as a Democratic senator from Arkansas, Bumpers now
heads up an organization composed of retired high-ranking military officers
devoted to developing a sensible military policy for the United States.
Widely regarded as a leader on arms control issues, Bumpers will
carry forward the centers work seeking a sensible and balanced military
policy. Bumpers opposed plans for an elaborate missile defense system, fought
against the F-22 and supported procurement reform at the Pentagon.
The present dominance of the Pentagon and its arms merchants
reminds one of the familiar but distressingly true observation of President
Dwight Eisenhower in his farewell address of Jan. 17, 1961. The only U.S.
general to be president in the 20th century said:
We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted
influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial
complex. n
Jesuit Fr. Robert Drinan is a professor at Georgetown
University Law Center.
National Catholic Reporter, January 22,
1999
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