This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.
Hey, it's the MIC, right? I'm thinking, of course, about the military-industrial complex. In this century, it's taken more taxpayer dollars than perhaps any other part of the government, with a Pentagon "budget" that's now heading for $900 billion a year. At this moment, President Trump has dispatched Elon Musk to do some cutting there (as at so many other places in the government) and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is planning to lend him a hand. I have no doubt that they'll find some immediate funds to slash and staff to obliterate. Still, I'd count on something else as well: Musk is a tech billionaire in an administration that simply loves tech billionaires -- and this country's tech billionaires like Peter Thiel of Palantir and Palmer Luckey of Anduril are clearly planning to make further fortunes off the MIC, as they provide the latest drone and AI weaponry to the place whose greatest skill in this century has been spending money while losing wars.
Oh, by the way, the Republicans in Congress recently released a blueprint for adding a future $150 billion to that very Pentagon budget! And count on one more thing: significant parts of that sum will undoubtedly go to producing futuristic high-tech weaponry. So don't for a second think that the Pentagon will truly be cut back (no matter what future headlines may tell you), not -- as TomDispatch regular Norman Solomon, author of War Made Invisible, suggests today -- while the MIC is transformed into the MITC (for military-industrial-tech complex).
As Solomon makes clear, this country has become a warfare state (even if it's been incapable of winning a war in this century) and that is indeed one way to pave a path to greater authoritarianism. Tom
How the Warfare State Paved the Way for a Trumpist Autocracy
A True Cost of War
Donald Trump's power has thrived on the economics, politics, and culture of war. The runaway militarism of the last quarter-century was a crucial factor in making President Trump possible, even if it goes virtually unmentioned in mainstream media and political discourse. That silence is particularly notable among Democratic leaders, who have routinely joined in bipartisan messaging to boost the warfare state that fueled the rise of Trumpism.
Trump first ran for president nearly a decade and a half after the "Global War on Terror" began in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The crusade's allure had worn off. The national mood was markedly different than in the era when President George W. Bush insisted that "our responsibility" was to "rid the world of evil."
Working-class Americans had more modest goals for their government. Distress festered as income inequality widened and economic hardships worsened, while federal spending on war, the Pentagon budget, and the "national security" state continued to zoom upward. Even though the domestic effects of protracted warfare were proving to be enormous, multilayered, and deeply alienating, elites in Washington scarcely seemed to notice.
Donald Trump, however, did notice.
Pundits were shocked in 2015 when Trump mocked the war record of Republican Senator John McCain. The usual partisan paradigms were further upended during the 2016 presidential campaign when Trump denounced his opponent, Hillary Clinton, as "trigger happy." He had a point. McCain, Clinton, and their cohort weren't tired of U.S. warfare -- in fact, they kept glorifying it -- but many in non-affluent communities had grown sick of its stateside consequences.
Repeated deployments of Americans to war zones had taken their toll. The physical and emotional wounds of returning troops were widespread. And while politicians were fond of waxing eloquent about "the fallen," the continual massive spending for war and preparations for more of it depleted badly needed resources at home.
Status-Quo Militarism
President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton represented the status quo that Trump ran against and defeated. Like them, he was completely insulated from the harsh boomerang effects of the warfare state. Unlike them, he sensed how to effectively exploit the discontent and anger it was causing.
Obama was not clueless. He acknowledged some downsides to endless war in a much-praised speech during his second term in office. "Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue," he affirmed at the National Defense University. "But this war, like all wars, must end. That's what history advises. That's what our democracy demands."
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
