(Tomdispatch.com) – Donald Trump likes to posture as a tough guy and part of that tough-guy persona involves bragging about how much he’s spent on the U.S. military. This tendency was on full display in a tweet he posted three days after an American drone killed Iranian Major General Qassem Suleimani in Baghdad: “The United […]
The Military-Industrial State Just Keeps Getting More Expensive for the Rest of US
By William D. Hartung | – (Tomdispatch.com) – I’ve been writing critiques of the Pentagon, the national security state, and America’s never-ending military overreach since at least 1979 — in other words, virtually my entire working life. In those decades, there were moments when positive changes did occur. They ranged from ending the apartheid regime […]
America’s Arms Sales Addiction: The 50-Year History of U.S. Dominance of the Middle Eastern Arms Trade
(Tomdispatch.com) – It’s no secret that Donald Trump is one of the most aggressive arms salesmen in history. How do we know? Because he tells us so at every conceivable opportunity. It started with his much exaggerated “$110 billion arms deal” with Saudi Arabia, announced on his first foreign trip as president. It continued with […]
Bestselling Pentagon Fiction: Beware of Defense Secretaries Pledging Reform
Co-author: Mandy Smithberger | – (Tomdispatch.com) – For the Pentagon, happy days are here again (if they ever left). With a budget totaling more than $1.4 trillion for the next two years, the department is riding high, even as it attempts to set the stage for yet more spending increases in the years to come. […]
How the Military-Industrial Complex Ate America
( Tomdispatch.com ) – When, in his farewell address in 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the “unwarranted influence” wielded by the “military-industrial complex,” he could never have dreamed of an arms-making corporation of the size and political clout of Lockheed Martin. In a good year, it now receives up to […]
Boondoggle, Inc.: Making Sense of the $1.25 Trillion National Security State Budget
By William D. Hartung and Mandy Smithberger | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – In its latest budget request, the Trump administration is asking for a near-record $750 billion for the Pentagon and related defense activities, an astonishing figure by any measure. If passed by Congress, it will, in fact, be one of the largest military […]
Pentagon Socialism: Militarizing the Economy in the Name of Defense
( Tomdispatch.com) – Given his erratic behavior, from daily Twitter eruptions to upping his tally of lies by the hour, it’s hard to think of Donald Trump as a man with a plan. But in at least one area — reshaping the economy to serve the needs of the military-industrial complex — he’s (gasp!) a […]
Trump’s Space Farce
(Tomdispatch.com) – Like many in my generation, undoubtedly including Donald Trump, I went into space early (and I’m not even counting all those hours in my early teens I spent reading Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy or H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds by flashlight under the covers while supposedly asleep). I’m thinking of 1966 and […]
How Trump is Turning US Diplomats into Arms Merchants to the World
New York ( Tomdispatch.com) – American weapons makers have dominated the global arms trade for decades. In any given year, they’ve accounted for somewhere between one-third and more than one-half the value of all international weapons sales. It’s hard to imagine things getting much worse — or better, if you happen to be an arms […]
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