The Second Face of Power: The Military

It may seem odd for an American to hear the United States Military having a second face to its power. It is, after all, a fierce enough organization on its front. The world's most expensive military; propagandized heavily by our leaders. And yet, our country's continued insistence on growing its power and continuing its national and international agendas has some arguably greed-based roots. While there's plenty to say about the more recent involvement in the Middle East in terms of oil and fossil fuel industry influences, The United States' militant state goes back to the Second World War. As we all know, WWII ultimately had a positive effect on the United States' economy. Coming out of The Great Depression, industries were suddenly jolted to life by a new, uniting threat: The Nazi Empire. While there were plenty of Nazi supporters in the United States before WWII (they even held massive rallies), America found itself increasingly implored to assist its European Allies as the imperialist Third Reich threatened to conquer nearly the entire European continent. When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, the United States was out of excuses, so we went to war. Industrial productivity increased by 96%, and 18 million civilian jobs were created. Defense spending went from 1% of the nation's GDP to 40%. Massive corporations such as Boeing and General Motors saw further growth in their respective industries. After the second world war, American was faced with another threat: the Soviet Union, which arguably posed a far greater threat to national security than the Nazi Empire every did, in many different ways. However, this new threat was intrinsically intertwined with two philosophies that had previously been popular in the United States (particularly during the 1920's): Socialism and Communism. The reactionary movement, therefore, emphasized the alleged superiority of Capitalism. And what's more Capitalist than providing government-backed opportunities for large corporations to make mass amounts of profit off of the industry of war? Since the Cold War, we've seen massive companies such as Raytheon, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing (again) continue to grow in productivity and thus in profit- although those profits (thanks to Capitalism) are siphoned mostly to the Capitalists at the top. Even after the Cold War ended in 1989 with the collapse of the Soviet Union, America continued its military expansion into the rest of the world; arranging coups, invading Middle Eastern nations (especially after September 11), and, of course, our continued and increasing military support of Israel. This all leads to today. We continue to spend over $600,000,000 per year on the military (compared to $66 billion on health care). Our president encourages and accelerates our military growth. But who does this all profit? The typical "American" story is that America acts as a form of "World Police," and we apparently ensure democracy and peace abroad. While this story is certainly questionable, there are many who bask in the nation's great military power, taking nationalistic pride in our country because of it. And yet, one has to question, is it worth the damage we've caused? Is it worth spending nearly half of our budget on the military, while the money could much more reasonably be used for health care, or renewable energy, or education, or social services? These programs would, after all, benefit every-day Americans significantly more than the military does. But the problem today is the same problem we had in the 1960's: The ability for a few people to accumulate massive amounts of wealth allows them to hold power within and over the United States' government. The sad truth of the matter is that our country functions in a way that primarily benefits the 1%, and thus the power imbalance between the few and the many means that any hope of changing it is slim. https://prospect.org/health/way-won-america-s-economic-breakthrough-world-war-ii/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93industrial_complex