Imperial Overreach: Forces Driving Pentagon Spending and US Asia-Pacific Military Strategies

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/15821-imperial-overreach-forces-driving-pentagon-spending-and-us-asia-pacific-military-strategies


Imperial Overreach: Forces Driving Pentagon Spending and US Asia-Pacific Military Strategies
Friday, 19 April 2013 00:00
By Dr Joseph Gerson, Truthout | Op-Ed

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Unfortunately, US citizens have not been sufficiently alert, knowledgeable or powerful to contain the influence of the military-industrial-Congressional complex. Instead, adjusted for inflation, Pentagon spending has grown from just over $300 billion in 1960 to today's post-Cold War $711 billion.

What does the Pentagon's base budget, excluding funding for actual wars, purchase? On an annual basis it pays for an estimated 1,000 foreign military bases costing at least $170 billion, depending on how you count; preparing for nuclear war at $60 billion; 1,419,000 warriors at $136 billion; new weapons and weapons systems for $114 billion; research and development at $61 billion; and new construction, military family housing and much much more.

In fact, we don't know how much the Pentagon really spends. Estimates, including "black box" secret budgets, run as high as a trillion dollars. The Pentagon concedes that it cannot account for hundreds of billions of dollars, and in desperation, one member of Congress has introduced legislation (doomed to fail) requiring an audit of Pentagon spending.

In addition to the imperial imperative of ensuring that the United States has the weapons needed to enforce "full spectrum dominance" - from modernized nuclear warheads and drones to cyber warfare and Prompt Global Strike (an effort to deliver a conventional weapon strike anywhere in the world within one hour) - two other dynamics have been at play: military Keynesianism and the armament industry's cunning strategy of subcontracting new weapons systems' production to a majority of Congressional districts.



unhappycamper comment: There is a reason for all the obfuscation around the DoD budget and what things actually cost: