SPEAKING FREELY Corporate war machine gathers speed
By Ismael Hossein-zadeh
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There is strong evidence that as the Bush administration is mulling over plans
to bomb Iran, the simmering conflict between high-ranking military
professionals and militaristic civilian leaders is bursting into the open.
The conflict, festering ever since the invasion of Iraq, has now been
heightened over the US administration's policy of an aerial military strike
against Iran. While civilian militarists, headed by
Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, are said
to have drawn plans to bomb Iran, senior commanders are openly questioning the
wisdom of such plans. [1]
The administration's recent statements that it is now willing to negotiate with
Iran might appear as a change or modification of its plans to launch a military
strike against that country. But a closer reading of those statements indicates
otherwise: such pronouncements are premised on the condition that, as President
George W Bush recently put it, "The Iranian regime fully and verifiably
suspends its uranium enrichment."
In light of the fact that suspension of uranium enrichment, which is nothing
beyond Iran's legitimate rights under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, is
supposed to be the main point of negotiation, Iran is asked, in effect, "to
concede the main point of the negotiations before they started". [2]
Military professionals question the administration's plans of a bombing
campaign against Iran on a number of grounds. For one thing, they doubt that,
beyond a lot of death and destruction, the projected bombing raids can
accomplish much, ie, destroy Iran's nuclear program.
For another, they caution that the bombing campaign could be very costly in
terms of military, economic and geopolitical interests of the United States in
the region and beyond.
More important, however, the professionals' opposition to the administration's
bombing plans stems from the fact that, as pointed out by renowned
investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, "American and European intelligence
agencies have not found specific evidence of clandestine [nuclear] activities
or hidden facilities" in Iran. Hersh further writes, "A former senior
intelligence official told me that people in the Pentagon were asking, 'What's
the evidence? We've got a million tentacles out there, overt and covert, and
these guys - the Iranians - have been working on this for 18 years, and we have
nothing? We're coming up with jack shit.'" [3]
So far, the jingoistic civilian leaders do not seem to have been swayed by the
expert advice of their military experts. And the discord over Iran policy
continues.
Some observers have attributed the conflict to Rumsfeld's uneasy relationship
with the military hierarchy, arguing that his cavalier attitude and
unwillingness to accept responsibility are the main reasons for the ongoing
friction between the military and civilian leadership. While there are clear
elements of truth to this explanation, it leaves out some more fundamental
reasons for the discord. There is a deeper and more general historical pattern
- often shaped by the economics of war - to the recurring disagreements between
the military and militaristic civilian leaders over issues of war and peace.
Let me elaborate on this point.
Differences over war and peace
Evidence shows that business or economic beneficiaries of war, who do not have
to face direct combat and death, tend to be more jingoistic than professional
military personnel who will have to face the horrors of warfare. Furthermore,
military professionals tend to care more about the outcome of a war and
"military honor" than civilian leaders, who often represent some powerful
economic interests that benefit from the business of war.
Calling such business and/or ideologically driven warmongers "civilian
militarists", military historian Alfred Vagts points to a number of historical
instances of how civilian militarists' eagerness to use military force for
their nefarious interests often led "to an intensification of the horrors of
warfare". For example, he points out how in World War II, "civilians not only
anticipated war more eagerly than the professionals, but played a principal
part in making combat ... more terrible than was the current military wont or
habit". [4]
The 2003 US invasion of Iraq serves as another blatant example of civilian
militarists' instigation of war in pursuit of economic and geopolitical gains.
A number of belatedly surfaced documents reveal that not only were the civilian
militarists, representing powerful business and geopolitical interests, behind
the invasion of Iraq, but that they also advocated a prolonged occupation of
that country to avail their legal and economic "experts" the time needed to
overhaul that country's economy according to a restructuring plan that they had
drawn up long before the invasion.
One such document, titled "Moving the Iraqi Economy from Recovery to Growth",
was obtained from the State Department by well-known investigative reporter
Greg Palast. The document, also called the "Economy Plan", was part of a
largely secret program called "The Iraq Strategy".
Here is how Palast describes the plan: "The Economy Plan goes boldly where no
invasion plan has gone before: the complete rewrite, it says, of a conquered
state's 'policies, laws and regulations'. Here's what you'll find in the plan:
a highly detailed program ... for imposing a new regime of low taxes on big
business, and quick sales of Iraq's banks and bridges - in fact, 'all state
enterprises' - to foreign operators ... Beginning on page 73, the secret
drafters emphasized that Iraq would have to 'privatize' [ie sell off] its 'oil
and supporting industries'." [5]
After a detailed account and analysis of the plan, Palast concludes, "If the
Economy Plan reads like a Christmas wish-list drafted by US corporate
lobbyists, that's because it was. From slashing taxes to wiping away Iraq's
tariffs (taxes on imports of US and other foreign goods), the package carries
the unmistakable fingerprints of the small, soft hands of Grover Norquist."
Norquist, once registered as a lobbyist for Microsoft and American Express, is
one of many corporate lobbyists who helped shape the Economy Plan for the "new"
Iraq. In an interview with Palast, Norquist boasted of moving freely at the
Treasury, Defense and State departments, and in the White House, "shaping the
post-conquest economic plans ...".
The Economy Plan's "Annex D" laid out "a strict 360-day schedule for the
free-market makeover of Iraq". But General Jay Garner, the initially designated
ruler of Iraq, had promised Iraqis they would have free and fair elections as
soon as Saddam Hussein was toppled, preferably within 90 days.
In the face of this conflict, civilian militarists of the Bush administration
overruled Garner: elections were postponed - as usual, on grounds that the
local population and/or conditions were not yet ripe for elections. The real
reason for the postponement, however, was that, as Palast points out, "It was
simply inconceivable that any popularly elected government would let America
write its laws and auction off the nation's crown jewel, its petroleum
industry."
When Palast asked lobbyist Norquist about the postponement of the elections, he
responded matter-of-factly: "The right to trade, property rights, these things
are not to be determined by some democratic election." The troops would simply
have to wait longer.
Garner's resistance to the plan to postpone the elections was a major factor
for his sudden replacement with L Paul Bremer, who, having served as managing
director of Kissinger Associates, better understood the corporate culture. Soon
after assuming power in Saddam's old palace, Bremer canceled Garner's scheduled
meeting of Iraq's tribal leaders that was called to plan national elections.
Instead, he appointed the entire "government" himself. National elections,
Bremer pronounced, would have to wait until 2005. "The delay would,
incidentally, provide," Palast notes, "time needed to lock in the laws,
regulations and irreversible sales of assets in accordance with the Economy
Plan ... Altogether, the leader of the Coalition Provisional Authority issued
exactly 100 orders that remade Iraq in the image of the Economy Plan."
Palast's report is by no means an isolated or exceptional story. It is part of
a historical pattern of how or why civilian militarists, often representing
powerful interests of the beneficiaries of war, tend to be more belligerent
than the professional military. The report also shows that, contrary to popular
perceptions, the jingoistic neo-conservative forces in and around the Bush
administration are not simply a bunch of starry-eyed ideologues bent on
"spreading US values". More important, they represent influential economic and
geopolitical interests that are camouflaged behind the facade of the
neo-conservatives' rhetoric and their alleged ideals of democracy.
There is clear evidence that the leading neo-conservative figures have been
longtime political activists who have worked through a network of warmongering
think-tanks that are set up to serve either as the armaments lobby or the
Israeli lobby, or both.
These corporate-backed militaristic think-tanks include Project for the New
American Century, the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Security
Policy, the Middle East Media Research Institute, the Middle East Forum, the
Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the Jewish Institute for National
Security Affairs, and the National Institute for Public Policy. Major
components of the Bush administration's foreign policy, including the war on
Iraq, have been designed largely at the drawing boards of these think-thanks,
often in collaboration, directly or indirectly, with the Pentagon and the arms
lobby. [6]
Even a cursory look at the records of these militaristic think-tanks - their
membership, their financial sources, their institutional structures and the
like - shows that they are set up in essence to serve as institutional fronts
to camouflage the dubious relationship between the Pentagon, its major
contractors and the Israeli lobby, on the one hand, and the warmongering
neo-conservative politicians on the other. More critically, this unsavory
relationship also shows that powerful interests that benefit from war are also
in essence the same powers that can - and indeed do - make war. Additionally,
it explains why civilian militarists are so eager to foment war and
international tensions.
By the same token, the incestuous relationship between war beneficiaries and
warmakers goes some way to explain the increasing tensions between the military
and civilian militarists in and around the Bush administration, especially in
the context of the administration's plans to bomb Iran. When contemplating war
plans, military commanders make some critically important decisions that seem
to be of no or very little significance to civilian leaders. Not only will the
military have to face direct combat, death and destruction but, perhaps more
important, the commanders will have to think very carefully about the outcome
of the war and the chances of victory, that is, the honor and pride of the
military.
By contrast, the primary concern and the measure of success for civilian
militarists lies in the mere act or continuation of war, as this would ensure
increased military spending and higher dividends for military industries and
war-induced businesses.
In other words, the standard of success for corporate beneficiaries of war,
which operate from behind the facade of neo-conservative forces in and around
the Bush administration, is based more on business profitability than on the
conventional military success on the battlefield.
This is a clear indication of the fact that, for example, while from a military
point of view the war on Iraq has been a fiasco, from the standpoint of the
powerful beneficiaries of the Pentagon budget it has been a boon and a huge
success. This explains, perhaps more than anything else, the ongoing tensions
between the military and militaristic civilian leaders, or chicken hawks.
Notes
1. Seymour M Hersh, "The military's problem with the president's Iran policy",
The New Yorker (July 10).
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Alfred Vagts, A History of Militarism: Civilian and Military (London:
Hollis & Carter, 1959), p 463.
5. Greg Palast, "Adventure capitalism", TomPaine.com (October 26, 2004).
6. William Hartung and Michelle Ciarrocca, "The military-industrial-think tank
complex", International Monitor (January-February 2003).
Ismael Hossein-zadeh is a professor of economics at Drake University, Des
Moines, Iowa. This article draws heavily on his newly released book,The
Political Economy of US Militarism.
