Why Militarization is a major threat to our democracy

What’s happened?

Militarization of our American society has grown to previously unthinkable proportions in the last 50 years—especially since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. With the collapse of the former Soviet Union, the United States was seen as an unchallenged global power. The so-called peace dividend that was supposed to result never materialized. The threat of “communism” has been replaced by a “war on terrorism.”

What’s the result?

The USA is now embroiled in endless wars in 78 countries across the entire planet including Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. at a huge cost in American lives and money. These wars have cost American taxpayers nearly $6 trillion, along with 7,000 US soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and at least another 500,000 civilian dead.

The USA is the world’s largest arms supplier, supplying 36% of the world’s military exports…dwarfing any other country. We provide arms to 98 nations including ammunition such as missiles, various aircraft, submarines, surface ships, anti-submarine weaponry, tanks, armored vehicles, as well as electronics such as radar, sonar, and guiding systems.

The Pentagon has spent so much money that no one can even keep track of it any longer. A 2018 audit of the Department of Defense (mandated by law in 1997 but never implemented until now) attempted to track spending. 1200 auditors from outside firms eventually gave up, finding that at least $21 trillion of Pentagon financial transactions between 1998 and 2015 could not be accounted for.

This is massive fraud, abuse and a complete lack of accountability associated with one of our last institutions that still commands public trust—the US military. Why has no politician, policy think tank, media pundit, or billionaire philanthropist taken issue with this?

Why is Militarism such a big threat to our Freedom from Fear?

The unaccountable growth of Militarism actually endangers our national defense and freedom by promoting a fearful landscape that can only be controlled by ever greater force. It’s the ideal closed loop money maker for the military-corporate-think tank-media establishment: keep everyone in constant fear of “terrorists” and “criminals” and feed them with corporate supplied, highly profitable solutions that escalate the atmosphere of violence.

Thus militarism extends far beyond the military to corrupt our attitudes and spending for “homeland security” and the way we conduct policing in our cities and towns. Such unchecked and unaccountable spending power actually makes the USA less safe and fuels an unending cycle of fear that perpetuates more militaristic solutions.

Think about this: the Pentagon (and the Department of Homeland Security) have already funneled $5.1 billion worth of military equipment, much of it directly from the country’s distant battlefields — assault rifles, land-mine detectors, grenade launchers and 94,000 of those machine guns — to local police departments around the country. 

What can we do about the growing threat of Militarism?

Get educated. Start with this overview article from The Nation: The Pentagon’s Massive Accounting Fraud Exposed.

Read everything you can by Andrew Bacevich, a former Army colonel who is president of the Quincy Institute. He is the author of several books on politics and the military and a frequent contributor at the publication Tom Dispatch. His son Andrew was killed in 2007 while serving with the Army in Iraq.

Question everything you see, read and hear about the US military. A recent report from the Washington Post labeled “The Afghanistan Papers” illustrates how our politicians and the Pentagon have consistently lied about the failures of our so called war on terror in the Middle East. Lies that have cost us dearly in blood and treasure.

Don’t equate support for our troops with funding for the Pentagon’s wasteful and unaccountable spending. The boosterism surrounding our “heroes” is what Bacevich calls “cheap grace” — paying lip service to their heroism while shortchanging them on pay, housing and healthcare.