This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.
It's strange when you think about it. Today, TomDispatch regular Frida Berrigan offers a look at the staggering number of taxpayer dollars that go to just one major arms manufacturer in one city in America, New London, Connecticut, where she lives. It's a company that's focused there on creating world-ending naval vessels -- nuclear submarines, to be exact. (Just what this world of ours doesn't need, of course!) But the money that's channeled into being a military power beyond compare (but never, it seems, beyond defeat) is hard even to take in. Consider just what it costs to support the 750 or so military bases that the U.S. still maintains across more than 80 countries, colonies, or territories on every continent except Antarctica. Best guess: approaching $100 billion annually.
And that's your money, your tax dollars. That means you, like the rest of us in this country, are in some strange fashion -- to steal an apt phrase from Berrigan -- "military dependent." Or put another way, believe it or not, the global military stance of the United States, which hasn't won a war of significance since World War II, is distinctly dependent on you and me. Given all the money that's gone into that military and the wars it hasn't won from Korea in the 1950s and Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s to the "forever wars" in Afghanistan, Iraq, and beyond of this century, if we were "investing" in anything else with similar results, there would be serious calls for us to stop.
No such luck, of course, when it comes to the ever-rising Pentagon and "national security" budget, which by 2022 had already reached an estimated $1.4 trillion annually! And with that, let Berrigan introduce you to one of the great sicknesses of our all-American age, MAD or Militarism Abuse Disorder. Tom
Militarism Abuse Disorder
A Very American Malaise
My name is Frida and my community is military dependent. (I feel, by the way, like I'm introducing myself at a very strange AA-like meeting with lousy coffee.) As with people who have substance abuse disorders, I'm part of a very large club. After all, there are weapons manufacturers and subcontractors in just about every congressional district in the country, so that members of Congress will never forget whom they are really working for: the military-industrial complex.
Using the vernacular of the day, perhaps it's particularly on target to say that our whole country suffers from Militarism Abuse Disorder or (all too appropriately) MAD.
I must confess that I don't like to admit to my military dependency. Who does? In my case, it's a tough one for a few reasons, the biggest being that I'm an avowed pacifist who believes that war is a crime against humanity, a failure of the imagination, and never (no, not ever) necessary. Along with the rest of my family of five, I live below the taxable income level. That way, we don't pay into a system that funds war preparations and war-making. We have to be a little creative to make our money stretch further and we don't eat out or go to the movies every week. But we don't ever feel deprived as a result. In essence, I've traded career success and workplace achievement for a slightly clearer conscience and time -- time to work to end militarism and break our collective addiction!
The Peter G. Peterson Foundation estimates that, in 2023, the United States of America spent $142 billion buying weapons systems and another $122 billion on the research and development of future weaponry and other militarized equipment. And keep in mind that those big numbers represent only a small fraction of any Pentagon budget, the latest of which the Pentagon's proposing to be $849.8 billion for 2025 -- and that's just one year (and not all of what passes for "national defense" spending either). A recent analysis by the Costs of War Project at Brown University calculated that, since September 11, 2001, the United States has used an estimated $8 trillion-plus just for its post-9/11 wars. Talk about addiction! It makes me pretty MAD, if I'm being honest with you!
It would be nice to ignore such monstrous numbers and the even bigger implications they suggest, to unfocus my eyes slightly as I regularly drive by the fenced facilities, manicured office parks, and noisy, bustling shipyards that make up the mega-billion-dollar-a-year industry right in my own neighborhood that's preparing for" well, yes" the end of the world. Instead, I'm trying to be clear-eyed and aware. I'm checking my personal life all the time for compromise or conciliation with militarism: Am I being brainwashed when I find myself cheering for the fighters in that blockbuster movie we splurged on? Am I doing enough to push for a ceasefire in Gaza? Am I showing up with young people in my community who are backing higher salaries for teachers and no more police in schools? And of course, I keep asking myself: How are my daily consumer decisions lining up with my lofty politics?
I don't always like the answers that come up in response to such questions, but I keep asking them, keep trying, keep pushing. Those who suffer from Militarism Abuse Disorder can't even ask the questions, because they're distracted by the promises of good jobs, nice apartments, and cheap consumer goods that the military-industrial complex is always claiming are right around the corner.
But here in my community, they never deliver!
New London: A Profile of Militarism Abuse Disorder
New London is a town of fewer than 28,000 people. The median income here is a little over $46,000 -- $32,000 less than the state average. We are a very old community. Long part of the fishing and hunting grounds of the Eastern Pequots,Nehantics, Mashantucket Pequot, and Mohegan, the city was founded in the 1600s and incorporated in the late 1700s. You see evidence of our age in the shape of our streets, curbed and meandering, long ago carved out of fields by cows and wagons, and in our architecture -- aging industrial buildings, warehouses, and ice houses in the neighborhoods where their workers once lived -- now derelict and empty or repurposed as auto repair stores or barber shops.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
