The Weapons Culture

excerpted from the book

Beyond Hypocrisy

by Edward S. Herman

published by South End Press, 1992

 

Defense, Containment, Aggression, and National Security

At the end of World War II, the United States enjoyed a historically l unique position of global power. The war had revived its previously depressed economy, teaching a lesson in "Military Keynesianism" that was quickly incorporated into establishment practice, if not thought. The war had also seriously weakened U.S. rivals: enemies Germany and Japan were defeated and devastated physically, and allies like Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union were also debilitated. The Soviet Union had been ravaged and suffered enormous casualties. Maintaining a large army, but exhausted and in no position to challenge the United States, the Soviet Union insisted only on preserving a security zone of dominated governments occupied at the end of the war and from which attacks had been launched against it.

In the Third World, the United States was confronted with popular movements threatening to break out of centuries-long subservience, exploitation, and oligarchic-colonial rule. The United States was well positioned to fight against these popular upheavals and to enlarge its own spheres of influence, which it did on a global basis from 1945 onward. In the process, it often displaced its own allies as the dominant power in important colonial areas like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Indochina, Pakistan, Thailand, and Indonesia, among other places.

U.S. leaders were, for the most part, well aware of their power and opportunity, and of Soviet weakness.' National Security Council Report 68, prepared just before the beginning of the Korean War in 1950, spelled out a "roll-back" strategy in which a rearmed United States would engage in systematic subversion of the Soviet satellite states, and even of the Soviet Union itself, by means that included the support of armed revolt. the United States was actively involved in roll-back operations in 1949 under a CIA program of organizing guerrilla bands of "former SS men" and ClA-trained Ukrainian operatives within the Soviet Union, parachuting in military supplies. These operations, along with the reconstruction of the Nazi intelligence apparatus of Reinhard Gehlen as the official espionage corps of the new West German state, also prior to the Korean war, were not featured in the U.S. media. The Korean war came along very opportunely to help justify the desired arms buildup.

NSC 68 was similar to the Reagan era Pentagon "Defense Guidance, 1984 88" report, which also spelled out a program of active destabilization of the Soviet empire by the deliberately beggaring effects of an arms race as well as by aid to armed groups within the Soviet bloc. The significance of these documents is that they presume an offensive U.S. policy against an enemy perceived as vulnerable; they project U.S. plans to subvert and "bury" the Soviet Union. NSC-68 does speak of the Soviet design to conquer the world, but this was an ideological construct that provided the necessary dire threat to rationalize a forward strategy. NSC 68, like the Reagan era Defense Guidance statement, rests on the assumption of Soviet weakness and vulnerability, and does not use language suggesting fear of aggression and attack. This is why these documents have been essentially suppressed in mainstream media and discourse, which instead gave great play to the rhetorical boast of Khrushchev that "I am going to bury you."

The national security elite also recognized in NSC 68 that taking advantage of the positive opportunities open to the United States required a large military force and mobilized population. Doublespeak embedded in a convenient matrix of anticommunist ideology was essential, as the U.S. establishment was obliged to pretend (or internalize the belief) that the huge global expansion of the U.S. political economy on which they had embarked was "defensive" and responsive to some external threat; that we were "containing" somebody else who was committing "aggression" and threatening our "national security."

The words and phrases "defense," "containment," "aggression," and "national security" are core items in the doublespeak lexicon, essential ingredients of the ink squirted out by the imperial cuttlefsh. They deflected thought from the pro active and purposeful aspects of U.S. foreign policy, the locus of the determining initiatives in the arms race and conflict, the source of the bulk of the killing, and the extent to which the fight was against indigenous, popular, and democratic movements abroad. Epitomizing the new world of doublespeak was the change in name of the War Department to the Defense Department in 1947, just at the historic juncture when the United States was embarking on a global offensive to reshape the world in accord with its dominant corporate interests (not in "our image," as in the common apologetic formulation).

In Greece, where the British, and then even more aggressively, the United States, reestablished an extreme rightwing regime of former collaborationist elements by ten or, fraudulent elections, and a vicious counterinsurgency war in the years 1944-1950, Stalin extended no aid to the communist and other left rebels under siege, and in fact strenuously opposed Yugoslavia's aid to the rebels. Nevertheless, Truman, aided by the "bipartisan" consensus and mainstream media, successfully made the crushing of the Greek Left and establishment of a right-wing police state by external (U.S.) force a "defensive" action to "contain" Soviet expansionism. This was a model of applied doublespeak that would be repeated often in the years to come.

And from that time till the end of the Reagan era, whenever the United States wanted to intervene to crush some indigenous popular movement or government not to the taste of United Fruit Company or the national security establishment, the search would be on for Reds, the connection would be made to the Soviet Union (along with some lesser devils like Cuba or Libya), and the government would be declared Marxist-Leninist and a Soviet puppet. The real and massive intervention - by the United States - required an Evil Empire behind the indigenous and popular forces that were the real target. The United States would regularly impose boycotts and escalate threats against the tiny victim, forcing it to buy goods and arms from members of the Soviet bloc. This would then be used to show both the aggressive intent of the victim and its allegiance to the international communist conspiracy.

The U.S. mass media has always swallowed this line of propaganda- even regarding Nicaragua in the 1 980s-never allowing that Nicaragua might be getting arms from the Soviet Union in response to a genuine threat or because of the U.S. and allied boycott, and never pointing out that the Sandinista military threat to its neighbors was implausible, unsupported by evidence, and rendered nonsensical by a watchful U.S. military presence. The press has never suggested that the linking of the victim under U.S. attack to the Soviet Union might be a red herring designed to obscure the real reason for opposition to the victim government The Democratic Loyal Opposition always jumps into line for fear of being tagged Red sympathizers, and intervention in violation of U.S. and international law proceeds unhampered.

The case of Nicaragua in the 1980s showed that, given the patriotic premises of the mass media and the absence of a political opposition to contest them, lies can be institutionalized and the truth stood on its head. This was shown earlier during the U.S. attack on Guatemala in 1954, alleged to be a response to Soviet aggression, although there were no Soviet troops, advisers, or arms on the scene, and despite the fact that the government of Guatemala had carefully avoided any formal diplomatic relations with Soviet bloc countries out of respect for (and fear of) U.S. sensitivities. It is true that very late in the day, with a U.S.-organized attack in the offing and a U.S. arms boycott long in effect, the Guatemalan government did buy a boatload of arms from Czechoslovakia, the discovery of which created hysteria among U.S. officials and in the U.S. press. But this is the convenient pathology of imperialism-to bring to life a virus in the hemisphere, to decry its existence, and to mercilessly eradicate it. Soviet control, expansionism, and aggression in the Guatemala case was fiction, on an intellectual par with the claims of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. But it was taken very seriously in the New York Times and media generally, and the uncontested view was that we were behaving defensively, containing the Soviet Union, not committing aggression to enforce our own positive standards of rule in Guatemala.

Behind all these claims and counterclaims was the allegation of a threat to U.S. "national security," the longstanding "Linus blanket" in which the imperial faction and military establishment have regularly wrapped themselves. When tied to the threat of Communism and the Evil Empire, the cry of National Security stills criticism, rationality, and decency. And it is trotted out with abandon. National security is both vague and highly elastic, so that Grenada, Nicaragua, even the entry into the United States of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mrs. Salvador Allende, a contingent of mothers of the massacred in El Salvador, or printed matter from Cuba can seriously threaten it. It seems that the national security of the United States, the greatest military power in history, is in constant jeopardy as the country cowers before the threats of popular movements in Nicaragua or Guatemala.

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Weapons in Search of Missions

During the period from 1945 to the present, a "weapons culture" developed in the United States to serve the interests dominating the U.S. power structure. These were mainly business interests that benefited from military power projected abroad-the weapons producers themselves; the oil companies that were helped to establish themselves in the Middle East and Venezuela, which benefited from the enforced opening of markets in Europe and elsewhere; other resource-exploiting firms (especially in mining, timber, and agribusiness); and other business and financial firms that were able to take advantage of newly penetrated markets. Wonderful contracts were written for U.S. iron, timber, and other mineral extraction and agribusiness companies following the U.S.-sponsored military coups in Brazil and Indonesia in 1964 and 1965. A large military establishment funded by the taxpayer served these global interests well.

As the weapons culture grew, the industrial interests producing weapons and their Pentagon and congressional allies-a so called "iron triangle" or ''military-industrial complex" (MIC) of enormous and partially independent power, gradually emerged. The MlC's ability to command resources rested on its service to the transnational corporate system, as well as its own extraordinary institutional power. It had the further advantage of providing for our "national defense" and protecting our "national security," and what politician would stand against funding defense and national security, especially when the corporate establishment (including the national media) would denounce and defund him for selling his country short.

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Even when a truly lunatic boondoggle certain to intensify the nuclear arms race was put foreword, as in the case of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) or Star Wars program, the power of the MIC was strong enough to preclude anything like adequate criticism. The SDI was supposed to provide a defensive shield in space that would intercept Soviet missiles and thus reduce the threat of war by providing a more-or-less foolproof defense. This extravaganza was based on fantastically complex technologies that did not exist. Its testing as well as deployment would have violated the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty of 1972. It was foisted on Reagan by some of his really far out technical advisers like General Daniel Graham of the World Anticommunist League and the American Security Council, without prior study or approval even from the Pentagon's technical staff. The alternative ways of reducing the threat of nuclear war, like disarmament and a comprehensive test ban (that would have limited the development of new weapons and reduced the reliability of old ones) were ignored in favor of a technological fix pleasing only to the MIC and Armageddon far right, and beyond Rube Goldberg.

There was some criticism of SDI's technical feasibility and probable limits as a defensive system, but it wasn't laughed off the stage as a completely irresponsible proposal, a gigantic waste of resources that would fuel the nuclear arms race, and a further demonstration of Reagan's incapacity for high office. One interesting suppression is worth noting: when the Soviets built a small ABM system for the "defense" of Moscow in the 1960s, a frenzied U S establishment declared it to have inherent and terrifying offensive implications. SDI, despite its vastly greater offensive implications, was not treated in that way; with trivial exceptions in the mainstream press, it was portrayed as a truly defensive system, a "noble dream", although of questionable workability. The power laws precluded an honest discussion of the prior allegations of the terrible threat stemming from "defensive" nuclear systems such as ABM.

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Beyond Hypocrisy