The Real Reason Why the United States Is Constantly at War
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Here is everything you need to know about the Military Industrial Complex.
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Here’s an annotated script with footnotes:
Sources/additional reading and watching:
Why We Fight by Eugene Jarecki
Purchase here:
Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire by Chalmers Johnson
Purchase here:
Dunlap, C. J. (2011). The Military-Industrial Complex. Daedalus, 140(3), 135–147.
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40% of all military spending around the entire world is done by the United States. It spends more money on its military than the next ten countries COMBINED.
Since World War Two, the United States has spent the most money on its military.
And that’s because military spending is one of the few things that tends to be bipartisan, meaning…both Republicans and Democrats in Congress generally are cool with this massive spending, despite one recent poll showing that 35% of Americans say the United States spends TOO MUCH on its military.
So why DOES the United States spend so much on its military?
First of all, because the United States is often the world’s police.
The American military controls around 750 military bases in at least 80 countries around the world. It has troops in as many as 150 countries. Some of these are countries where it has military bases might surprise you. For example, did you know it has a military base in Honduras? Also, did you know it has 120 bases in Japan alone? In recent years, the United States has spent tens of billions of dollars maintaining JUST THOSE MILITARY BASES IN JAPAN. The governments of all these countries where there’s American military bases are mostly cool with it. After all, they’re getting extra security with an American military presence, and often for free. However, as documented in this classic book, Blowback by the late Chalmers Johnson, many of the local residents DON’T want foreign troops in their backyards.
Regardless, for at least 75 years, most of the world has just accepted and even welcomed the fact that the United States is often the world’s police force, the country that seemingly steps in to put out all the fires in the world. Not only that, but it has formal treaties that make it obligated to step for the defense of at least 51 countries around the world.
Others argue that a huge American military budget is necessary to “spread democracy” or “defeat authoritarianism” around the world. Notice how I put those in quotes since often the American government is, in reality, often just preserving authoritarianism and hurting democracy around the world through its military actions. Even others say a huge military budget is needed to counter the growing military threat and aggression of Russia and China. Then again, many argue that the growing military threat and aggression of Russia and China is BECAUSE of American military interventionism around the globe, but ya know…
However, there’s another, much more nefarious, reason why the United States government spends so much gosh darn money on its military, and that’s the military industrial complex.
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