The majority went to Asia and to the crisis region of the Middle East. Between the Persian Gulf and the Bosphorus, imports of heavy weapons – the SIPRI report is concerned only with these – rose by 61 percent. Between 2011 and 2015, India was the only country to import more weapons that Saudi Arabia – a land with just 30 million inhabitants. Compared with 2006–2010, the oil sheikhdom’s arms purchases have almost trebled. Number four in the list of the biggest importers of arms is the United Arab Emirates, with a population of barely five million. Turkey is number six.
Tag Archives: USA
Americans do not think their miltiary is the most powerful in the world, even though it is
“I will take umbrage with the notion that our military has been gutted,” Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Paul Selva stated during a Pentagon press briefing in early February. “I stand here today a person that’s worn this uniform for 35 years. At no time in my career have I been more confident than this instant in saying we have the most powerful military on the face of the planet.” The American public, it seems, would beg to differ. According to a to a Gallup pollconducted the same week as Selva’s testimony, just 49 percent of Americans “think the United States is number one in the world militarily,” the fewest since the question was first asked in 1993. An equal number of Americans (49 percent) believed that the United States was “only one of several leading military powers.”
Can we afford to lose Russia?
This is such a serious problem to consider and prevent. The article is worth reading whole.
Let’s imagine a hypothetical scenario in which an imaginary country—we’ll call it Country X—that the U.S. is ostensibly at peace with after decades of tension also happens to have the nuclear capability to destroy the world as we know it. Engaging in respectful dialogue and making compromises on both sides could result in a global coalition with the power to defeat ISIS. Yet rather than choosing this option, the U.S. considers imposing harsh sanctions on Country X to weaken its already struggling economy, and then proposes stationing troops on Country X’s borders. All this despite the fact that if Country X’s economy or government collapses, the world security order would be thrown into even greater chaos. Now substitute “Russia” for “Country X.”
“In the U.S., there is almost no real, serious public debate about this gravest of international crises,” said Katrina vandal Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation Continue reading
Jeffrey Sachs on CIA and Hilary
This instrument of U.S. foreign policy has not only been in stark violation of international law but has also been a massive and repeated failure. Rather than a single, quick, and decisive coup d’état resolving a US foreign policy problem, each CIA-led regime change has been, almost inevitably, a prelude to a bloodbath. How could it be otherwise? Other societies don’t like their countries to be manipulated by U.S. covert operations.
Removing a leader, even if done “successfully,” doesn’t solve any underlying geopolitical problems, much less ecological, social, or economic ones. A coup d’etat invites a civil war, the kind that now wracks Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. It invites a hostile international response, such as Russia’s backing of its Syrian ally in the face of the CIA-led operations. The record of misery caused by covert CIA operations literally fills volumes at this point. What surprise, then, the Clinton acknowledges Henry Kissinger as a mentor and guide?
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What Bernie Sansders’ Foreign Policy may look like
What would a President Sanders’ foreign policy look like? Based on his record and my conversation with him, I believe it would be rooted in a number of key principles. First is restraint in using American force abroad. As he has stated, and as is demonstrated by his vote against the Iraq War and the first Gulf War, Sanders believes military action should be the last, not first, option and that, when taken, such action should be multilateral. I also believe, based on our conversation, that he would follow the Weinberger Doctrine (also known as the Powell Doctrine): When the United States uses military force abroad, our objectives should be clear, we should be prepared to use all the force necessary to achieve those objectives, and we should know when they have been achieved. …
Sanders’ military restraint extends to spending, too. Since coming to Congress, he has argued forcefully and repeatedly for eliminating waste, fraud and abuse in the Pentagon so that we can reduce defense spending. There is no need for the United States to spend more than the next seven top-spending countries in the world combined, several of which are our allies, and more in real dollars than we spent annually on average during the Cold War. As President Obama has pointed out, while America has many challenges in the world, we are not in the midst of World War III.
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US arms sales to Saudi Arabia
Amid regional turmoil, Obama Administration officials have referred to the Saudi government as an important regional partner, and U.S. arms sales and related security cooperation programs have continued with congressional oversight. Since October 2010, Congress has been notified of proposed sales to Saudi Arabia of fighter aircraft, helicopters, naval vessels, missile defense systems, missiles, bombs, armored vehicles, and related equipment and services, with a potential value of more than $100 billion. Since March 2015, the U.S.-trained Saudi military has used U.S.-origin weaponry, U.S. logistical assistance, and shared intelligence to carry out strikes in Yemen. Some Members of Congress have expressed skepticism about Saudi leaders’ commitment to combating extremism and the extent to which they share U.S. policy priorities. Nevertheless, U.S.-Saudi counterterrorism ties reportedly remain close, and Saudi forces have participated in some coalition strikes on Islamic State targets in Syria since 2014.
Obama’s final defense budget will be a huge headache for the next POTUS
There is a defense budget crisis on the horizon, but the Pentagon is hiding its head in the sand. Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s reluctance to deal with it threatens to waste billions and saddle the next president with a political time bomb before she/he even sets foot in the White House. …
According to a Jan. 27 report by budget guru Todd Harrison at the centrist Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), many of the new weapon systems the Pentagon plans to build will reach their peak funding requirements at the same time, around 2022. This is known in defense jargon as a modernization “bow wave” and, given budget caps and limited resources, there will not be enough money to pay for it. Continue reading
Cutting Global Military Spending – The $1 Trillion Yellow Line That We Need To Return To
From a welfare state to a warfare state
But money in politics is not the only major institutional factor in which everyday and state violence are nourished by a growing militarism. As David Theo Goldberg has argued in his essay “Mission Accomplished: Militarizing Social Logic,” the military has also assumed a central role in shaping all aspects of society. Militarization is about more than the use of repressive power; it also represents a powerful social logic that is constitutive of values, modes of rationality and ways of thinking. According to Goldberg,
The military is not just a fighting machine…. It serves and socializes. It hands down to the society, as big brother might, its more or less perfected goods, from gunpowder to guns, computing to information management … In short, while militarily produced instruments might be retooled to other, broader social purpose – the military shapes pretty much the entire range of social production from commodities to culture, social goods to social theory.
Richest counties in the United States; Defense Industry
Something very similar is true of America’s sprawling defense apparatus. The Pentagon, with its $585 billion budget and millions of contractors, are a huge part of why northern Virginia has the richest counties in the nation. Add to that the tangled complex of intelligence agencies (so ludicrously over-classified that even their topline budget numbers are secret, though the total came to $53 billion in 2012) whose lawless incompetence does not even slightly diminish their enormous political clout, and you’ve got a force to be reckoned with.
Obama missed his last opportunity to bring down unsustainable nuclear weapons spending trajectory
The Fiscal Year 2017 proposal contains significant increases for several Defense and Energy department nuclear weapons systems pursuant to the Obama administration’sredundant, all-of-the-above approach to remodeling the arsenal. (See chart). The request does not make significant changes to the planned development timelines for these programs.
The president missed one of his last opportunities to make common sense adjustments to the current nuclear weapons spending trajectory.
According to a Congressional Budget Office report in January 2015, the direct costs of the administration’s plans for nuclear forces will total about $350 billion between fiscal 2015 and fiscal 2024. Over the next 30 years, the bill could add up to $1 trillion, according to three separate independent estimates.
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The United States plans to spend $66 million to construct military facilities in the Philippines
The United States plans to spend $66 million to construct military facilities in the Philippines under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement. Continue reading
Smarter defense spending
By a U.S Marine infantry veteran:
Strengthening the military is not simply a matter of demanding more taxpayer dollars for the Department of Defense. We don’t simply need more defense spending—we need smarterdefense spending. And, if Republicans want to legitimately claim to be the party of fiscal responsibility, then they must lay out robust plans to tackle waste and inefficiency within the Pentagon- not just give lip service to the issue. Continue reading
Financial Reform
So right.
While it is reasonable to subject a reform agenda to the 2008 test, this should be at most a side issue. After all, it is virtually certain that our next crisis will not look our last crisis. Financial reform first and foremost is not about preventing the last crisis, but rather about designing a financial system that more effectively serves the rest of the economy.
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“The US’s military procurement machine may be the single most successful system of wealth transfer ever devised”
The US’s military procurement machine may be the single most successful system of wealth transfer ever devised – moving tens of billions of dollars every year from ordinary taxpayers into the pockets of big defense contractors and their allies in Congress. But as a provider of working equipment to defend the United States against realistic threats, it is becoming more and more dysfunctional with every passing year.
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US ‘to quadruple defence budget for Europe’
On Europe, Mr Carter said increased funds would allow greater numbers of troops to be deployed to European bases, as well as more training and exercises with allies.
“We’re taking a strong and balanced approach to deter Russian aggression,” he said. “We haven’t had to worry about this for 25 years, and while I wish it were otherwise, now we do.” …
The Pentagon’s proposed 2017 defence budget will include $3.4bn for its European Reassurance Initiative – up from $789m for the current budget year. Continue reading
RAND: Nuclear weapons in Europe useless to deter Russian attacks
The central nuclear observation of the report is thatNATO nuclear forces do not have much credibility in protecting the Baltic States against a Russian attack.
That conclusion is, to say the least, interesting given the extent to which some analysts and former/current officials have been arguing that NATO/US need to have more/better limited regional nuclear options to counter Russia in Europe. Continue reading
Saferworld new reports: Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia
However, alternatives to the dominant military-authoritarian paradigm – in which militarised notions of masculinity are also a prominent feature – are available. In the discussion paper, Dilemmas of Counter-Terror, Stabilisation and Statebuilding, Saferworld provided a review of global evidence on the impacts of existing approaches, and suggested a number of constructive directions for improved policy, including:
- Avoiding defining conflicts narrowly as problems of ‘terror’, ‘extremism’ or ‘radicalisation’, and instead adopting a more impartial, holistic and sustainable approach to resolving them
- Changing international and national policies and approaches that fuel grievances and undermine human rights
- Redoubling efforts for diplomacy, lobbying, advocacy and local-level dialogue to make the case for peace and adherence to international law by conflict actors
- Looking for opportunities to negotiate peace – balancing pragmatic considerations with a determined focus to achieve inclusive and just political settlements in any given context
- Considering the careful use of legal and judicial responses and targeted sanctions as alternatives to the use of force
- Taking greater care when choosing and reviewing relationships with supposed ‘allies’
- Supporting transformative reform efforts to improve governance and state-society relations and uphold human rights
- Choosing not to engage if harm cannot be effectively mitigated and no clear solution is evident.
New Report: 500 F-35s may be built before proven combat ready
Tests of how Lockheed Martin Corp.’s F-35 will perform in combat won’t begin until at least August 2018, a year later than planned, and more than 500 of the fighter jets may be built before the assessment is complete, according to the Pentagon’s test office.
“These aircraft will require a still-to-be-determined list of modifications” to be fully capable, Michael Gilmore, the U.S. Defense Department’s top weapons tester, said in his annual report on major programs. “However, these modifications may be unaffordable for the services as they consider the cost of upgrading these early lots of aircraft while the program continues to increase production rates in a fiscally constrained environment.” Continue reading
F-35s hit by another big setback
The code delay is the latest—and possibly most damaging—setback for the Pentagon’s ambitious and controversial plan to replace almost all of its Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps fighters with three different versions of the F-35 at a cost of more than a trillion dollars over the next 50 years.
Damaging, because the military and F-35-maker Lockheed Martin have increasingly sold the F-35 as a sort of “flying computer” whose software can outthink enemy pilots even when the enemy’s own planes fly faster, maneuver better and carry more weaponry than the F-35 does.
The stealth fighter’s software is its last possible claim to being a first-class warplane. If the F-35’s code doesn’t work, then neither does the F-35. Saddled with thousands of dysfunctional F-35s, the Pentagon could lose command of the air. Continue reading
Tipping Point North South 