The force controlling the USA

The re-thinking of the US role in the world ought to be on many people’s agenda. Strain is visible, and there are now obvious grave budgetary difficulties, and something has got to give – or happen.

It all has to do with military spending: the military part of the budget has passed 50 %, there is a non-solved economic crisis going on touching upon all ordinary Americans lives. The US military spending is about half the military spending of the whole world – with 5% of the world population. Nobody seems to be willing to challenge this activity, to end wars, to turn all this productive capacity into bettering the lot of the ordinary Americans instead.

The US defence activity is not a project to protect own shores and land, it is about being active all over the world, about policing the world, and building and wielding economic power for a select few. It has been said that American forces can be present anywhere in the world in the course of two hours. It is a great machine.

A new arms race seems to have been set in motion related to China. Other conflicts are boiling in many places, there is heavy arming in the Middle East – the US military industry is producing like never before, weapons are also bought in many countries. The people of the US benefit only slightly from this, but the owners of the military industry benefits wildly. In the process the US has made the world into a playground for itself: pushing security thinking forward, backing it up with military equipment and running a global economic wonder-machine for the select few.

The result of using such massive resources for war purposes is a slow process of suffocation for US society and the US role in the world. This clearly can not go on. The USSR is already a goner – will the US be the next one? Or will there be a war soon – to prop up the economy? A disgraceful thought of course.

The US never disarmed after world war one – it appeared there was lots of money to be made keeping military activity on a high level. It also never disarmed after World War II – there was just too much money to be made. And it will just keep going so long as the taxpayers can pay.

It has all been called the military-industrial complex MIC, war has become part of the economic policy, it stimulates the economy, war is good for the economy. Similar thinking has earlier been seen in Britain, Germany, France in colonial days. But now US taxpayers are seeing the picture: The US economy can no longer carry this burden – the end is near. People are not getting what they should have for their tax money: a good life. The politicians see this well, but appear lame.

Also the fearmongering – we had the cold war, now is terror – what will be the next – glorifying war – we don’t need enemies to have a society.

Is this all we can say – is there a systemic force at work that we can not control? Is this the fruit of centuries of civilisation, of idealistic nation-building? Think what is possible instead – what it could be.

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