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There's no business like war
business
By Thalif Deen
NEW
YORK - When the dust finally settles on postwar Iraq,
the United States may have unleashed virtually all of
its state-of-the-art weaponry on a country already
devastated by 13 years of rigid United Nations
sanctions.
After two weeks of heavy pounding, US
military forces so far have dropped more than 8,700
bombs, including more than 3,000 missiles, and also
fired millions of rounds of ammunition on military and
civilian targets inside the country.
When US
fighter pilots in B-2 stealth bombers launched the
initial attack on a residential compound in Baghdad -
believed to be a meeting place for Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein and senior Ba'ath Party officials - the
opening salvo included a pair of 2,000-pound
(907-kilogram) bombs and 36 long-range Tomahawk
missiles.
The US military will have to replace
all of these weapons - worth billions of dollars -
giving a tremendous boost to the US military industry,
which has been on the skids since the previous Gulf War
in 1991.
In the latest "Congressional Budget
Justification for Foreign Operations", the State
Department predicts that US arms sales will exceed US$14
billion this year, the largest total in almost two
decades, compared with $12.5 billion in 2002. "A tragic
indicator of the values of our civilization is that
there's no business like war business," said Douglas
Mattern of the New York-based War and Peace Foundation.
"I believe arms sales will increase even beyond the
staggering amount we have today, due to a continuing
destabilization of the area and the lobbying for sales
by the armament industry," Mattern told Inter Press
Service.
One writer describes a "charmed circle
of American capitalism, where Tomahawk and cruise
missiles will destroy Iraq, while Bechtel Corporation
will rebuild the country. And stolen Iraqi oil will pay for
it."
"US weapons contractors are likely to gain
significant profits because of this war," said Natalie
Goldring, executive director of the Program on Global
Security and Disarmament at the University of Maryland.
"They'll be paid to replace the weapons that are used or
destroyed in the war. The companies will also trumpet
their successes at next summer's Paris Air Show,
searching for foreign buyers," Goldring said.
Global annual military spending was $780 billion
in 1999, $840 billion in 2001 and is on target for $1
trillion, according to UN estimates. Besides the human
casualties, the Iraqi war has already seen the
destruction of millions of dollars' worth of military
equipment on both sides of the battlefield.
A US
Apache Longbow helicopter, such as the one brought down
by Iraqi farmers, costs about $22 million. The Bradley
infantry fighting vehicle, which is also on the casualty
list, is priced at more than $1.2 million. The war has
also seen the destruction for the first time on a
battlefield of a monstrous US-built Abrams battle tank.
Goldring pointed out that Washington has armed
Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Jordan for decades.
"The strategy was to give and sell these countries
weapons so that they could defend themselves, and we
wouldn't have to deploy US forces to the region. This
strategy has clearly failed," she added.
Of the
world's 10 major buyers of US weapons systems last year,
five were from the Middle East: Egypt ($1.1 billion),
Kuwait ($1 billion), Saudi Arabia ($885 million), Oman
($826 million) and Israel ($710 million). The other five
nations in the top 10 were South Korea, Japan, Canada,
Greece and Britain.
"We have armed unstable
regimes with our most sophisticated weapons, and have
then used the widespread proliferation of the weapons as
the argument for producing the next generation of more
expensive weapons. The vicious cycle continues,"
Goldring said.
The really big money for US
military contractors, says Mattern, is in the annual
Pentagon budget, which has risen from $294 billion in
2000 to about $400 billion in 2003. At the current rate
of growth, the budget is expected to hit $500 billion by
2010.
He said the Pentagon will spend about $60
billion to buy new arms this year and more than $30
billion on research and development of new weapons. "The
US armament industry is the second most subsidized
industry, after agriculture," he added. The Iraq war
will also affect the global fight against poverty,
because of the huge cost of the war and its aftermath.
"It will also degrade health care and other needs in the
United States," claimed Mattern. One-half of the world's
governments spend more on the military than on health
care, he added. "The war business is the world's
ultimate criminal activity."
US President George
W Bush last week sought congressional approval for a
hefty $75 billion to fund the first six months of the
Iraqi war and related anti-terrorism and foreign-aid
expenses. "With the intensity of the war so far," said
Goldring, "the $75 billion is probably just the down
payment on the war."
The bottom line, says New
York Times columnist Paul Krugman, is that the US will
win on the battlefield, probably with ease. "I am not a
military expert," he wrote, "but I can do the numbers:
the most recent US military budget was $400 billion,
while Iraq spent only $1.4 billion."
(Inter
Press Service)
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