This report was originally published by Eric Zuesse at Strategic Culture Foundation
The Commission on National Defense Strategy for the US has just released to Congress its report “Providing for the Common Defense”, and it opens: “In the National Defense Authorization Act of 2017, Congress charged this Commission with providing an independent, nonpartisan review of the 2018 National Defense Strategy and issues of US defense strategy and policy more broadly.” The report’s co-chairs, Eric S. Edelman and Gary Roughead, say in their accompanying letter to Congress, that “the United States will soon face a national security emergency.” It doesn’t describe that “emergency,” but uses it to argue that ‘defense’ spending needs to soar and all other spending by the Government — especially for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other “entitlements” — needs to shrink, and/or recipient beneficiaries of those programs need to pay more, and taxes need to increase, so that this “emergency” can be dealt with. They say that the weapons-manufacturers and soldiers need more money, and that this military requirement is an “emergency” but other federal spending is not.
The Executive Summary says:
Rivals and adversaries are challenging the United States on many fronts and in many domains. America’s ability to defend its allies, its partners, and its own vital interests is increasingly in doubt. If the nation does not act promptly to remedy these circumstances, the consequences will be grave and lasting.
The document strongly urges expansion of the US regime’s policing of the world, in the interests of America’s international corporations.
(EDITORIAL COMMENTARY: Neither the U.N. nor any other international body, has appointed the US regime to police the world. Furthermore, the US regime is the most frequent invader of foreign nations; and always, at least since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, is invading on the basis of lies and in violation of international law. But, the US regime nonetheless — as in “Providing for the Common Defense” — anoints itself the ‘authority’ to be police, judge, jury, and executioner, over this entire planet. This US-Government intention is a well-recognized fact recognized by peoples around the world. Hitler’s Government likewise viewed itself in this way. US President Obama stated this self-anointed global authority for the US, by asserting that “The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation”, which means that every other nation is dispensable. Hitler agreed with that viewpoint for Germany, and frequently expressed it.)
On page 63 (80 of the pdf), “Providing for the Common Defense” states:
Embracing a Whole-of-Government
Approach to Strategic Competition
This Commission was charged with making recommendations regarding US defense strategy. Yet even if America were to fund the Department of Defense lavishly, and even if all the other recommendations in this report were to be implemented, that would not be sufficient to address the threats and challenges facing the country today. America’s two most powerful competitors — China and Russia — have developed national strategies for enhancing their influence and undermining key US interests that extend far beyond military competition.
It therefore urges placing the US Government on a war-footing, in virtually every governmental department.
On that same page, it states:
Looking ahead, policymakers must address rising government spending and decreasing tax revenues as unsustainable trends that compel hard fiscal choices… Congress should look to the entire federal budget, especially entitlements and taxes, to set the nation on a more stable financial footing. In the near-term, such adjustments will undoubtedly be quite painful. Yet over time — and probably much sooner than we expect — failing to make those adjustments and fully fund America’s defense strategy will undoubtedly be worse.
In other words, according to this congressionally mandated report: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education, public health, safety-regulations, civilian infrastructure, and all other non-‘defense’ programs, must be severely slashed in order for the United States to be able to buy more of the machinery of mass-murder from Lockheed Martin and the other American manufacturers of the machinery of mass murder, which now form the basis for the American economy, of foreign conquests and coups, which must now be greatly escalated in order to keep America ’safe’ and those weapons-makers’ investors and executives happy. Similarly, America’s soldiers need more money. Furthermore:
Comprehensive solutions to these comprehensive challenges will require whole-of-government and even whole-of-nation cooperation extending far beyond DOD. Trade policy; science, technology, engineering, and math education; diplomatic statecraft; and other non-military tools will be critical — so will adequate support and funding for those elements of American power.
Their top (#1) “Recommendation” is:
The United States urgently requires rapid and substantial improvements to its military capabilities, built on a foundation of compelling and relevant warfighting concepts at the operational level of war.
“Recommendation” #9 states:
Deterring aggression in the Western Pacific will require using focused investments to establish a forward-deployed defense-in-depth posture. To deter a revanchist Russia, the United States and its NATO allies must rebuild military force capacity and capability in Europe.
#11 states:
The Air Force, Navy, and Army will all need capacity enhancements.
#24 urges:
Budget caps were — and still are — harmful to American defense.
In other words: If eliminating, or at least slashing, non-‘defense’ spending can’t be done, then the Government must go yet further into debt now, in order to be “Providing for the Common Defense.” If necessary in order to address the ‘defense’ ‘emergency’, everything else now must be sacrificed.
#31 is:
Congress should look to the entire federal budget, especially entitlements, as well as taxes, to set the nation on a more stable financial footing.
So: in case not enough money can be extracted from non-‘defense’, and from increasing the debt, then taxes — including taxes on the non-recipients of “entitlements” — must be increased, in order to be “Providing for the Common Defense.” That’s what an “emergency” is. Only the expenditures for soldiers and for the manufacturers of the machinery of mass murder are to be served, if sufficient extractions fail to materialize from those other sources.
The two chairmen, and the ten other members of the Commission, are all longstanding neoconservatives, supporters of all US invasions and coups and conquests. The first co-chair, the Republican Eric S. Edelman, for example, is so neoconservative that he condemns even neocon Democrats (such as Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden) who pretend not to be neoconservative in order for them to be able to campaign effectively for the votes of Democrats in Presidential primaries. For example, here’s from Wikipedia’s article on Edelman:
In July 2007, Edelman attracted media attention for criticizing Senator Hillary Clinton, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.[10] In a private letter to Senator Clinton in response to a request made to the Pentagon in May 2007 for an outline [of] plans for withdrawing troops from combat in Iraq, Edelman rebuffed her request and wrote:[11][12]
“Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia.”
The Associated Press described his criticisms as “stinging”.[10] According to the Associated Press, Edelman’s comments were: “unusual, particularly because it was directed at a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee”.[10] The Associated Press pointed out that fellow committee member Republican Senator Richard Lugar had also called for discussions of withdrawing US troops from Iraq, but had escaped Edelman’s criticism. Clinton has said she is “shocked by the timeworn tactic of once again impugning the patriotism of any of us who raise serious questions” about the Iraq war.[13]
Senator Clinton needed that anti-neocon pretense in order for her to be able to campaign effectively for the votes of Democrats during the then-upcoming 2008 Democratic Party Presidential primaries. Edelman was that extreme a neocon: he demanded it even of a Democratic Party politician who would soon be running for that Party’s Presidential nomination and needing to fool her Party’s primary voters in order to have any realistic possibility to receive her Party’s nomination.
Edelman was nonetheless appointed by the US Senate on 12 August 2011 to be a Director of the Orwellianly (“Newspeak”) named US Institute of Peace, and he still is a Director of that pro-US-aggression propaganda-organization.
The other co-chair of this Commission, and of its report, Admiral Roughead, is a Director of Northrop Grumman, which is America’s fifth-largest manufacturer of mass-murdering machines, and he also is a writer for the neoconservative Brookings Institution, where, in February 2013, prior to the post-2014 soaring US ‘defense’ budgets, he co-authored a report, “National Defense in a Time of Change” saying:
Our spending [on ‘defense’] now constitutes 46 percent of the entire world’s allotment (IISS 2012, 31). The next highest is China, with a reported budget of $89 billion, although this figure is surely underreported and does not account for disparities in compensation, procurement, and infrastructure costs. A remarkable chasm of commitment to strong military forces exists between the United States and most other countries. Comparisons of defense spending as a percentage of gross domestic product do not capture the magnitude of US spending nearly as well as do per capita expenditures, which give a snapshot weighted by population but absolute in terms of input. Our country spends $2,250 per person on our military forces every year; Russia spends $301 per person, Iran $137, and China $57 (IISS 2012, 467–473).
So, now that this Grumman Director is working under a President (Trump) who is even more neoconservative than was Obama (or maybe even than Senator Clinton), he’s screaming for yet more money for himself and his investors, in the form of increasing ‘defense’-contracts.
CONCLUSION
That’s whom America’s troops are actually fighting for — the owners, and their executives — people who want more money and don’t care about the millions of people around the world that they help to kill and the millions of others whose continuing lives they make hellish (including even some destitute Americans who need the social services that will be cut in order to fund purchases of yet more bombs and missiles). America’s masters today are such psychopaths as this. Even 46% of the entire world’s military budget isn’t enough to satisfy them. Most individuals who become convicted and executed aren’t nearly as harmful as these people are, who ride so high the American nation, and (they demand) the entire world. They’re like Hitler’s Nazis, but on nuclear steroids. And the US Congress appointed this Commission.
It would really be nice and solve a lot of problems if we could just shut down the MIC altogether. But I know, that’s a pipe dream.
Without a highly trained and well equipped military how long do you think we would last as a sovereign nation?
There’s a big difference between keeping a close eye on them and controlling the costs and shutting everything down.
Like murdering and stealing from other nations people is something to be proud about, a mentally twisted mindset. How does corporatism and the constant need for more profit benefit the majority of Americans? It does not in reality. Other nations are not waging war on the US but defending their own people’s future from the US and allied aggression. Now these control freaks want all of the money to plunge America into a third world existence hyper armed in reality to protect themselves from the nations people they have totally turned against and consider to be enemies. This present administration is the perfect enemy of everyday Americans to carry this plan forward. Where is the pushback?
THE DEPT. OF OFFENCE NEEDS MORE FED NOTES! HOW CAN WE MURDER AND DESTROY AND OCCUPY IF WE DON’T HAVE MORE FED NOTES? SCREW YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY, LOCKHEED NEEDS IT WORSE THAN YOU!
It would be more accurate to compare our MIC to Stalin’s murderous maniacs. The number of priests, nuns, and faithful Christians killed in Russia by Trotsky and especially by Stalin, his own Cossacks, the Ukrainian farmers he starved, the numbers dwarf those of the Nazis. But I understand the comparison. Sixty years of war propaganda by the victorious has rubbed in just how evil Hitler was while ignoring just how evil the Communist Uncle Joe really was. And we Americans were no saints back in 1944-1947. Operation Keehaul, the repatriation of the Cossacks to Russia by the English allies was a shameful disgrace. The treatment of German prisoners of war by our men under then General Eisenhower is nothing to be proud about. And the genocide of German civilians by starvation after the war was nothing short of an atrocity. No, the American MIC has done more than its share of murder. We don’t need Ww3.
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Post in moderation.
What did I say that got it censored?
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The truth?
Is it a surprise to anyone that a govt. report supports massive spending by the govt.?
I wonder how much WE paid for this piece of propaganda.
For a pretty significant portion of my life I worked in Aerospace industries. I built F15, 14, and 18 Radar systems.
I helped certify military aircraft. I know why military aircraft toilet seats cost thousands of dollars initially.
The #1 job of the Federal government is the defense of the United states. Not all the bullsh it stuff we waste money on.
I submit that most of what the Federal government does is not Constitutional, but a Democrat party construct to influence stupid people to vote for them. Had I been able to invest the money I and my employer paid out for Social security and Medicare I’d be much better off than what I now face. Cut it all, starve the poor, weak, and the elderly. They all vote Democrat and are destroying this nation.
BTW I’m poor, elderly, and losing muscle mass, but I took care of business when I was younger and never voted for a Democrat.
I do not think we have the time to gear up for anything.
How long now does it take to build a ship,or a plane unless we dust off everything from the bone yards which will be targeted by a first strike or or a small nuke put in place.
It’s not WW2 when we had time to gear up. but that took 6 months to really get going.
How are we going to get these zombies, and couch potatoes with there game boys and Ipods to put them down and go to work ?
As for training I do not think any of these fat slugs are going to make the first cut during boot camp ????
I think we are in trouble.
But oh!!!! we have the 2nd amendment which we will lose if Marshall Law goes in effect, and the Constitution is suspended.
OHHH MY !!!!
The fat stupid sluggos will just be cannon fodder. Great way to get rid of them IMO. Throw the millions of them out on the front line, the enemy will run out of ammo and the real soldiers we have will mop up!
And put them all in bright red dresses LOL! 😀
It’s very expensive to take over the entire world. To date every nation attempting to do so has destroyed their economies in the process.
Right K2.
No one is going to have to “take over” anything… we are going to beg them for it.
Who’s we? You mean the snowflakes and libs and neocons? Sure as hell won’t see me begging for shit!
The Romans failed as they ended up absorbing a polyglot of culture, then the ranks of their soldiers consisted of the same, then they just stopped caring about being soldiers and were invaded.
If you are Irish or Scanadanavian you should smile as you never fell under Roman authority. Too irascible, I reckon.
The Spanish tried slavery and mining to suck out all the gold and silver from the New World. Both were ultimate failures with the latter superinflating their economy.
The Ottomans failed as well as the Mongols largely due to a total inability to maintain a cult of personality.
World empires never work as the capitol is so far from the borderlands that it is both logistically impossible to project power and supply the troops. The plebians will revolt every time to have self-determination.
America is NOT an empire as we have not gained an inch of territory since 1898 without giving it back, thus we are total failures at being a military power.We lack the ruthlessness when it comes right down to it as our constitutional republic is founded upon natural rights.
NWO needs more military support. As they go all in, they will need more troops for those who resist.
Who do you serve? Government, or the people? Who benefits?
Other than black budgets (which have totally unknown amounts), we spend at least 156 billion on 800 foreign bases. Why? Japan cannot legally have a military YET THEY DO in their Self-Defense Forces. On top of which they pay 50 % of the cost…allegedly. Yet Germany pays only 20% of their costs! Why? Why not 100% or frankly 120% so we show a profit?
If we are having rapid deployment forces and we allgedly are capitalists, then our military should show a profit as they are effectively mercenaries. Otherwise Germany and Japan have the money to pay for all kinds of things for their citizens while competing with us on trade. That goes for every nation we are protecting.
This sticks in my craw as they say we neglect giving our citizens healthcare and education YET Americans are paying for German military spending so Germans can have better healthcare and cheaper university tuition!
It is outrageous.
First of all we have a Department Of Offense which largely serves the expansionism of multi national corporation and financiers. The issue isn’t who finances it but rather its existence. From this perspective Germany shouldn’t pay more the US should spend far less.
Actually BOTH Russia and the USA have corporations who make vast sums of money selling armaments. Meanwhile the DOD owning a tank is a depreciating item which generates no profit.
Since both France and Germany have pushed for an EU military, let them do it and protect themselves. By gosh if they want to bankrupt their nations buying more US made armaments, we can sure gear up production. But we should not pay for it, nor provide soldiers and civilians UNLESS we see at least a 20% profit due to huge political cost.
It’s a farce because Germany has an abysmal amount of fighter jets that are even operational. They spend a minscule amount of their GDP on military spending. It’s bluster as they lack the money to create an all EU military plus their citizens would riot at the prospect.
Macron the Microbrain is already the having country-wide riots in France over the mandatory fuel tax.Imagine massive military spending!
But but but, the chemtrail program costs so much there isn’t enough leftover. We need all that profit from afghanistan opium trade and stolen oil to pay for the migrants and welfare. Whats a poor communist to do?
Amen.
First off the defense industry needs to be told that any cost overruns on systems is on them.Contracts are made spelling out how much is paid for what system. Then,they need to give up all OEM information. That way the military will take care of the hardware and the taxpayer will save on paying individual cotractors. Then knock off getting anymore new gadgets and invest in spare parts. We got ships in drydock,planes in hangers,and Army equipment rusting away in the motor pool ’cause of spare parts shortage. Finally,KEEP EVERYBODY HOME unless it is a dire emergency .
South,
Have you ever played Chess? Or Risk?
You never want to fight on your home Territory.
While I’m not for carrying on un-constitutional
wars as everything since WWII has been, but
we need to fight, base, and station assets
well away from our home shores. As much as
I despise Democrats, I’m not a destroy
Los Angeles to save it sort of guy.
I’d gladly let them blast L.A. to save a good place. That maui wowie must be good! 😛
One other thing, tell the Army no more wasting time and money on yet another uniform change. Get rid of all these generals,admirals,and what not. We got more of them now then at any other time in the country.
Most of the people massed along our southern border (and all our other borders as well), come from countries that the US has messed with one way or another.
Either through regime change; or outright assassination of a country’s leader; or selling them debt we all knew they could never pay back and them taking that country over the way repo men cart away the cars of dead beat owners. This has been the foreign policy of the US for decades. What we have put out there is now coming back to haunt us.
Now, the American taxpayer is looking at coughing up another $6.5-trillion bucks just to keep Karma at bay. Payback is a bitch.
I am not happy with this, but the consequences of taking in all the world’s poor, especially the scum of the Earth, is not an option. Neither is lowering our standard of living to pay for the Military Industrial Complex (MIC).
We have to bring the military home. Use it to take out these sanctuary cities and states. Defend the borders. Build the wall. Deport everyone who shouldn’t be here. Close the borders. Stop all immigration. We don’t need all these people. The United States had the world’s strongest economy with half the population it has now. Arrest all these unelected rogue billionaires. Declare them “enemies of the state.” Confiscate all their assets. Revoke their passports and visas, and deport them.
I would pay for this.
I like your solution!
That would be a great start but until you get rid of the fed reserve, NOTHING will change.
President Eisenhower MIC speech (excerpt)
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
My son is in Navy Boot Camp right now.
Guide him to pursue a field that has nothing to do with weapons. A young woman we knew was in munitions in the Air Force that was then loaned out to the Army in Iraq to assist in defusing IEDs. She was killed in an explosion. Avionics, propulsion, skilled trades including Sea-Bee may be good choices. Best of luck to you and him.
Thank you. He will be a submariner. I am not sure which area yet. SECF.
rellic,well,I truly hope the next war isn’t too far away,’cause we haven’t the way to deploy anybody in a timely manner. Navy is too busy building Littor type boats that don’t freakin’stay afloat,some new fangled ship that has all its guts BELOW the waterline,and don’t get me started with the Air Force. The Army is obsessively stuck on computer,satellite gadgets that wont work if attacked by electronic jamming or a bad sand storm.And I don’t give a damn about Los Angeles either!
Money, that can be written into existence, without consideration, does not need to be taken from one person and given to another. You have a mint. You do not want me to believe in my own provisions. What do you need me for. Take it outside, and don’t break anything.
I think the whole damn idea is absurd. Our military is rapidly becoming just another social welfare program
thanks to previous administrations. Anymore, we just seem to have a knack for getting into never ending conflicts with open ended costs with questionable benefits. Since the early 1990s, with the enthusiastic support of major defense contractors and big technology companies, we have sent much advanced U.S. electronics production to China. So much so that there now is a problem in the military with compromised components. The Chinese are cleaning our clock when it comes to cyber espionage of some of our most advanced military equipment like the Joint Strike Fighters advanced radar systems. I do not know what the answer is, but it sure as hell is not blinding giving the military more of our tax dollars to waste.