Pentagon Strategy Highlights Trump Failure to Oppose Military-Industrial Complex

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The new US National Defense Strategy making great power competition with Russia and China a top priority confirms President Donald Trump’s surrender to the forces of the US military-industrial complex, analysts told Sputnik.
Sputnik

On Friday, US Defense Secretary James Mattis while unveiling the 2018 US national defense strategy said the new doctrine emphasized that the United States will now focus on long-term competition with China and Russia.

CAVING TO MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

On Monday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the Defense Department’s new strategy reflected a Cold War mentality and distorted facts about China’s diplomatic and defense policies.

University of Louvain philosopher and political commentator Jean Bricmont told Sputnik the new strategy revealed the limits to which Trump felt able to go in reducing US interventionist and militaristic policies.

"It was a welcome move by Trump to denounce the interventionist policies and the regime change operations of his opponents, but one could not expect too much from him, namely a policy that really rejects the demands of the military-industrial complex," he said.

Power of US Military-Industrial Complex Exceeds That of Presidency - Activist
The US military was in essence as huge bureaucracy, which was generally useless. So, it needed to find a justification for its own continued, expensive existence, Bricmont explained.

"For that, we need a mission of a threat. Missions work for the idealist minded, threats for the supposedly pragmatist. For the latter, one has red scares, missile gaps… terrorism and the like," Bricoment said.

Since the 1980’s, partly as a result of the embarrassment of the US defeat in Vietnam, the justification for American wars had been idealist, that is based on defending human rights and the right to protect, Bricmont recalled.

"This justified the wars in Yugoslavia, Libya, and the arming of rebels in Syria," he said.

Since 9/11, the United States had also engaged in the so-called "war on terror," Bricmont continued.

Terrorism, however, had finally been defeated in Syria, at least for the time being and largely thanks to Russian help, and the last human rights intervention in Libya had led to the crisis of refugees. Therefore the United States needed a new justification for military spending, Bricmont observed.

"So, great power competition is back. Of course, since neither Russia nor China have the slightest intention of attacking the US on its soil, this justification is just as bogus as the previous ones," he said.

If Russia and China do not overreact by launching their own arms race, this increase of US military spending will further weaken the US economy and strengthen its supposed competitors, Bricmont predicted.

"The basic [US] policies are always the same, only the ideological justification changes," he concluded.

IMPERIALIST TRADITION

University of Illinois Professor of International Law Francis Boyle told Sputnik hat Trump’s new strategy document was set firmly in the tradition of US militarism and imperialism.

"This document is a further continuation and escalation of the US Strategy of Unlimited Imperialism," he said. "The Pentagon is planning to fight and ‘win’ World War 3 against Russia and/or China as well as to control, dominate, terrorize and intimidate the rest of the world under one pretext or another. "

President George W. Bush and his administration had sought to exploit the tragedy of the September 11, 2001 al-Qaeda terror attacks, Boyle recalled.

How US Military-Industrial Complex Forming Trump's Syrian Policy
The George W. Bush administration set forth to steal a hydrocarbon empire from the Muslim states and people of color living in Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa under the "bogus pretexts" of fighting a war against so-called international terrorism or Islamic fundamentalism, he said.

Since then, US administrations had also used the justifications, or excuses of claiming to try and eliminate weapons of mass destruction, promote democracy and self-styled humanitarian intervention to try and justify their power grabs around the world, Boyle stated.

"My teacher, mentor, and friend the late, great Professor Hans Morgenthau denominated ‘unlimited imperialism.’ The outstanding historic examples of unlimited imperialism… all have in common an urge toward expansion," he said.

Discuss