The perpetuation of America’s permanent
war economy in the 21
st
century
Analysing the entanglement of interests in the acquisition process of
Northrop Grumman’s ‘Global Hawk’
MSc Politicologie, Internationale Betrekkingen
Universiteit van Amsterdam Master’s thesis 2016
Titus Reijntjes
10070294
Design title page: Richard Podkolinski
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ... 4
INTRODUCTION ... FOUT! BLADWIJZER NIET GEDEFINIEERD. CHAPTER 1: THE GREAT DEPRESSION, WORLD WAR II AND THE RISE OF PERMANENT U.S. MILITARISM ... 10
1.1 THE GREAT DEPRESSION, WORLD WAR II AND THE DECREASE OF FAITH IN CAPITALISM AS A HUMANE ECONOMIC SYSTEM ... 11
1.2 THE RISE OF MILITARY KEYNESIANISM ... 12
1.3 POST-‐WAR U.S. IMPERIALISM AND THE EMERGENCE OF PERMANENT U.S. MILITARISM ... 14
1.4 ONGOING MILITARY OPERATIONS AND HIGH MILITARY SPENDING IN THE POST-‐COLD WAR ERA ... 15
CHAPTER 2: THE IMPACT OF PERMANENT U.S. MILITARISM ON THE AMERICAN SOCIETY ... 17
2.1 THE SOCIAL AND SPIRITUAL CONSEQUENCES OF PERMANENT MILITARISM FOR AMERICAN SOCIETY ... 17
2.2 THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF PERMANENT U.S. MILITARISM ... 18
CHAPTER 3: AMERICAN POLITICS, WHO GOVERNS? ... 20
3.1 THEORIES OF AMERICAN POLITICS ... 20
3.2 WHICH THEORETICAL TRADITION BEST CAPTURES THE REALITY OF AMERICAN POLITICS? ... 21
3.3 THE POWER ELITE AND THE MILITARY-‐INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: AN ENTANGLEMENT OF INTERESTS BETWEEN ELITE ACTORS FROM POLITICS, ECONOMICS AND THE MILITARY ... 24
3.4 THE IRON TRIANGLE ... 25
3.5 THE IRON TRIANGLE AND DEFENCE CONTRACTING ... 26
3.6 INTEREST GROUPS AND THE ARGUMENT OF PLURALISM ... 28
3.7 DEFENCE CONTRACTORS’ POWER GAMES: THE REVOLVING DOOR, FRONT LOADING, AND POLITICAL ENGINEERING ... 29
CHAPTER 4: THEORY-‐TESTING PROCESS TRACING ... 32
4.1 WHY FOCUS ON DRONE TECHNOLOGY? ... 32
4.2 WHY FOCUS SPECIFICALLY ON THE GLOBAL HAWK DRONE? ... 33
4.3 THEORY-‐TESTING PROCESS TRACING: FORMULATING A CAUSAL MECHANISM ... 34
4.4 THEORY-‐TESTING PROCESS TRACING: TRANSLATING THEORETICAL EXPECTATIONS INTO CASE-‐SPECIFIC PREDICTIONS ... 37
4.5 THEORY-‐TESTING PROCESS TRACING: DATA AND EVALUATION OF THE CASE-‐SPECIFIC PREDICTIONS ... 39
CONCLUSION ... 52
LITERATURE ... 53
As my studies draw to a close, I am happy to look back on my years at the University of Amsterdam. It was a stimulating period in which I greatly expanded my skills and capabilities. The master International Relations has enabled me to bring together many of my interests and expand my knowledge on a variety of topics.
My thesis has allowed me to work on a fascinating topic. However, I could not have done this without the help of certain people. First of all, I am grateful to my supervisor Polly Pallister-‐ Wilkins for her constructive criticism and reassuring words of advice on writing a master’s thesis. Secondly, I would like to thank my family, Claartje van Well, Stephan Reijntjes and Dido Reijntjes for showing me unwavering support in times of difficulty. Not just during the time of writing this thesis, but also more in general, you have always supported me in whatever ways possible, for which I am very thankful.
defined by global military presence and projection of power through constant foreign interventions (Coyne & Duncan, 2012). Since then, the U.S. has been at war somewhere every year. It fought wars in Korea, Nicaragua, Vietnam, the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, as well as in Chile, Grenada, Panama and multiple countries in Africa (Melman, 2003). Besides these conflicts the United States has engaged in hundreds, if not thousands, of military interventions and “low intensity operations” around the world (Cunningham, 2004, p. 556-‐557).
This state of permanent war is sustained by its own niche economy, consisting of thousands of American industrial enterprises with millions of employees who research, design, produce, and deliver material and services to their main client, the Department of Defence. The proportion of this permanent war economy, measured in terms of the annual budget of the Department of Defence, is staggering. Consistently, the U.S. spends more on its military than any other nation in the world. With a military budget of $597 billion, the U.S. spent more on its military in 2015 than the next eleven highest spending countries did combined (Business Insider, 2015). Even allowing for some periods of spending decline, U.S. defence spending has shown an upward trend since the demobilization following World War II, with annual U.S. military budgets continuously exceeding $350 billion (Coyne & Duncan, 2012, p. 417).
To account for its huge military apparatus, the U.S. has articulated several justifications throughout the decades, all of them framed in terms of an “external threat to U.S. national interests” (Hossein-‐Zadeh, 2006, p. 76). To rationalize the continuous growth of the military apparatus that commenced in 1950, the American people were told that permanent war mobilization was necessary to contain the ‘communist threat’. Since then, this threat has been supplanted by the somewhat vague notions of ‘rogue states’, ‘global terrorism’, ‘the axis of evil’, ‘militant Islam’ and, more recently, ‘enemies of democracy’ (Hossein-‐Zadeh, 2006, p. 76).
Accordingly, every fiscal year the most expensive weapon systems are procured under the rhetorical guise of national security. A search of the keywords “National defence” in the video library of C-‐Span, a political broadcasting platform providing access to proceedings in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, will invariably lead one to come across politicians arguing
tomorrow’, and that ‘military budget cuts are [therefore] a threat to the national security’.
While there may be some truth to the proposition that a country like the United States needs a strong military to protect its global interests, the enormous amount of resources the U.S. spends on its military every year cannot solely be explained from the perspective of national security. To truly understand the U.S. ‘military metaphysic’, we need to look beyond the dominant political discourse of national security and study the way in which those who profit from increased military spending are combining their efforts to keep the United States in a state of permanent military preparedness (Coyne & Duncan, 2012, p. 415).
As scholars discussing the strands of literature on the military-‐industrial complex and the American war economy point out, “there is an economic and political power elite that is predominant within American society, and [it] is cohesive on core shared values and rules of the game” (Cunningham, 2004, p. 561). Military spending provides employment, profits, and resources for the corporations, communities and political actors engaged with the military industrial complex. Therefore, corporate, military and political elites have a vested interest in keeping the vicious cycle of increased defence spending and American militarism spinning, and will collectively try to offset any efforts to reduce it in scale and scope (Cunningham, 2004, p. 561; Feinstein, 2012). Because of this cycle, ongoing U.S. militarism is said to be “driven not so much by some general or abstract national interest, as it is by the special interests vested in the military-‐industrial complex that need an atmosphere of war and militarism in order to justify their lion’s share of public money” (Hossein-‐Zadeh, 2006, p. 3).
In 1961, American president and former commanding general Dwight Eisenhower warned about the entanglement of interests between the U.S. military establishment, the arms industry and certain agents within the American federal government when he spoke about the military-‐ industrial complex:
We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions…This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence is felt in every city, every
must guard against the unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-‐industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist (Eisenhower, 1961).
In this thesis I will look at the workings of the military industrial complex and study whether the “unwarranted and misplaced power” of which Eisenhower spoke-‐-‐that is, power that results from the entanglement of interests between elite political, corporate and bureaucratic actors-‐ -‐still persists in the councils of government today. By uncovering the linked interests of members in Congress, key actors within the Department of Defence, and the American arms industry, I will study whether, in the 21st century, governmental decision-‐making on the acquisition of weapon systems is influenced by corporate interests. However, since it goes beyond the scope of this thesis to study the influence of the military industrial complex upon the perpetuation of America’s war economy in the 21st century as a whole, I will exclusively focus on one instance specific to more contemporary times in which the influence of the military industrial complex may manifest itself: the federal acquisition process of Northrop Grumman’s Global Hawk drone.
When George W. Bush painted the picture of “tens of thousands of al-‐Qaeda trained terrorists in at least a dozen countries” and the United States embarked upon a global war on terror, the American way of war began to transform from one that was temporally and spatially bound to one that could effectively happen anywhere at any time (Beck, 2002; Gregory, 2011). It is within this frame of the “everywhere war”, that the use of ‘traditional’ full-‐scale military operations and equipment is seen as impractical and the U.S. military increasingly relies on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV’s) as the main alternative (Coyne & Duncan, 2013; Shaw, 2013). As budgets for drone programs have increased significantly from $363 million in 2001 to $4.61 billion in 2016, it is important, however, not to look at the increased military use of drones as an inevitability that accompanies the United States’ military switch from traditional to asymmetric warfare or to blindly accept the ‘fact’ that drones provide a financially, technically, or operationally superior means of defence relative to alternative technologies (Center for the Study of the Drone, 2016). Instead, we should consider the possibility that the increased
advance its interests.
To my knowledge, within the scientific debate concerning America’s war economy and the role of the military industrial complex in perpetuating it, no work has yet focused exclusively on drone technology and the way in which corporate drone manufacturers are wielding their political power to promote the military use of drones in the 21st century. As such, by answering the following research question, this thesis aims to make a contribution to the scientific debate concerning the perpetuation of America’s war economy in the 21st century:
How did the entanglement of interests between Northrop Grumman, certain members in Congress and elite actors within the Department of Defence influence the federal acquisition process of Northrop Grumman’s Global Hawk drone?
In what follows, I will first shed light on the context in which permanent U.S. militarism and its concomitant war economy emerged. By discussing the context of the Great Depression and World War II, the first section of chapter one will show that the United States initially used the expansion of its military apparatus as a means to an end in the process of stabilizing its own economy and thereafter to stabilize the world economy as well. Subsequently, the last section of chapter one will discuss some of the most important rival explanations for ongoing U.S. militarism in the post-‐Cold War era.
In chapter two, I will delve into the ways in which permanent militarism has influenced American society. Here I will show how permanent militarism has shaped social institutions with seemingly little connection to battle and review some of the most important spiritual, social and economic consequences of sustained high military expenditures for the American people.
In chapter three I will focus on theories of American politics to find out how we can best understand the fact that annually, the United States continues to spend huge amounts of resources on its military in excess of what is needed for maintaining national security, despite the overall negative effects of high military spending on American society. By reviewing the
elites and organized interest groups who have the most influence over shaping public policy and who should therefore be the starting point of the forthcoming analysis. However, given the fact that private interests cannot dominate policy-‐making without complicity from both legislators in Congress and bureaucrats in government agencies who actually make and implement policy, I will subsequently discuss the mid-‐range theory of the ‘iron triangle’ to elucidate how the overlapping interests of business-‐oriented interest groups, Congressmen and bureaucrats can lead to the passing of very narrow ‘pork-‐barrel’ policies that only benefit a small segment of society while the interests of the public at large are neglected.
After having laid a theoretical foundation for understanding how the United States’ war economy is perpetuated, chapter four will discuss the method of ‘theory testing process tracing’, which will be applied to the federal acquisition process of Northrop Grumman’s Global Hawk. This application will discern whether, in the 21st century, America’s war economy is proceeding on track with the predictions of existing theories. In chapter four I will also discuss my main findings, followed by a conclusion in chapter five.
01 The Great Depression, World War II
and the rise of permanent U.S. militarism
In the United States’ long and varied history of violence and war-‐making, World War II and the Great Depression that preceded it represented major turning points. During those years, the scale and scope of U.S. war-‐making, militarism and the arms industry expanded massively, and, more significantly, took on a permanent form (Cunningham, 2004, p. 556; Coyne & Duncan, 2013). Prior to World War II, wars with U.S. involvement were each followed by a period of military demobilization which reduced the size of the military establishment to its pre-‐war size. After World War II, this reduction also took place, but only very briefly, as “the subsequent remilitarization that started under President Truman in the late 1940’s continued unabated to [modern times]” (Hossein-‐Zadeh, 2006, p. 39).
Since Truman’s presidency, the U.S. has maintained a global military presence, configured its forces for global power projection and countered existing or anticipated threats by relying on a policy of global interventionism (Bacevich, 2010, p. 14). In the words of Coyne and Duncan “by the end of the [second world] war, the idea of defence had become one of constant preparation for future wars and foreign interventions rather than an exercise in response to one-‐off threats” (Coyne & Duncan, 2012, p. 415).
In order to comprehend why the United States embarked upon the path of permanent war after the demobilization following War II, this chapter will show how U.S. militarism has been interrelated with-‐-‐and used in service of-‐-‐the American ‘project’ of capitalism since the Great Depression. The first section will argue that growing anti-‐capitalist sentiment during the Great Depression led the United States’ established order to look for ways to end the grave economic circumstances and restore trust in capitalism as an economic system. These efforts, in turn, led to military deficit spending as a way to stimulate the lagging economy. The second section will
argue that U.S. planners constructed a liberal international order after World War II to retain the United States’ level of overall supremacy in the post-‐war era. To achieve this order, ongoing U.S. militarism played a crucial role, as it helped “safeguard and keep open global markets and resources to U.S. Capital” (Hossein-‐Zadeh, 2006, p. 54). Finally, section three will discuss several explanations for ongoing U.S. militarism in the post-‐Cold War era.
1.1 The Great Depression, World War II and the decrease of faith in capitalism
as a humane economic system
The Great Depression was a dramatic event which shook the American people’s beliefs about the way in which capitalism worked. After the catastrophic stock market crash on October 29th 1929, also knows as ‘Black Tuesday’, the United States spent more than a decade in economic crisis. Millions of Americans lost their jobs, and, as a result, people from all strands of society began to think that capitalism had failed them (Coyne & Duncan, 2013; Library of Congress, n.d.).
Many people found it difficult to understand why “in a country with abundant resources, the largest force of skilled labour and the most productive industry in the world, the depression had occurred and could not be resolved” (Library of Congress, n.d.). Moreover, because the depression was caused by the mechanisms of capitalism itself, people began to believe that market economies were inherently unstable and that “the only means of recourse to a failing market was the increase of state intervention” (Coyne & Duncan, 2013, p. 220).
The failure of the market mechanism to provide people with their basic needs led many Americans to lose faith in capitalism as a self-‐adjusting and humane system. Among the working classes, as well as in the ranks of the middle and lower middle classes, demands were made “to do away with the unreliable, and, at times, brutal forces of market mechanism” in favour of a regulated and managed national economy (Hossein-‐Zadeh, 2006, p. 40).
As professor Hossein-‐Zadeh points out, “Contempt with the status quo and the desire for change swelled the ranks of communist, socialist and other opposition parties.” The joint
communist presidential candidates won more than one million votes, while the number of third party votes in congressional and local elections were even more conspicuous (Hossein-‐Zadeh, 2006, p. 52). The outbreak of World War II then, further undermined the viability of capitalism, as it heightened the need for government intervention in the economic affairs of the nation even further and led to discussions about economic nationalism and self-‐sufficiency should the war interrupt foreign trade (Hossein-‐Zadeh, 2006, p. 41-‐43).
1.2 The rise of Military Keynesianism
The established order of the United States, which consisted of business and government leaders, understood that the widespread popular discontent and unrest of the working class, combined with issues of economic self-‐sufficiency, formed a serious threat to their interests. The leaders of big businesses with high stakes in international trade and investment were especially anxious of a scenario in which the United States would be largely self-‐sufficient within the Western hemisphere. In response, they set out to “restore trust in [the] market mechanism and defeat sentiments of economic isolationism in favour of globalization” (Hossein-‐Zadeh, 2006, p. 41).
In doing so, the American established order was highly influenced by the economic ideas of John Maynard Keynes. Keynes, who became well known for his anti-‐cyclical economic theory, argued that the Great Depression might continue indefinitely unless government spending, financed by a budget deficit, were increased sufficiently (Independent Institute, 2001). Taking into consideration the popular acceptance of defence spending as opposed to other forms of deficit spending, it was John Maynard Keynes who acknowledged the potential of military spending to solve the ongoing problem of unemployment (Coyne & Duncan, 2013). An exogenous rise in military spending would increase aggregate demand and, if there is spare capacity, increase utilization of resources, Keynes argued (Dunne, Smith & Willenbockel, 2005).
Indeed, military deficit spending seemed to stimulate the economy, as the massive American war-‐mobilization during World War II, financed by deficit spending, coincided with the return of prosperity for the American people. During the years of war, millions of men and women served overseas and almost all who remained at home dedicated themselves to supporting the
war in whatever ways possible. As a result, some 17 million jobs were created and the Gross National Product (GNP) rose by 70 percent between 1939 and 1944 (Independent Institute, 2001). By 1944, the level of unemployment had even shrunk to 1.2%, the lowest rate ever achieved (Library of Congress, n.d.; Gilder Lehrman Collection, 2013). Renowned economist and opponent of the military industrial complex Seymour Melman summarized this war deficit scenario as a “business boom [which] brought economic opportunity, better living and money in the bank to almost all who participated in it” (Coyne & Duncan, 2013, p. 221).
However, while most Americans were enjoying the return of prosperity, in the midst of the war effort U.S. planners were already preoccupied with ensuring the United States’ economic viability in the post-‐war era (Stokes, 2005). Concerns began to emerge that, in the short term, “the removal of military funds at the war’s end would result in [yet another] economic collapse” and arguments were made that war spending should continue after the war concluded (Coyne & Duncan, 2013, p. 222). Moreover, it was believed that in the long term, the sustainability of U.S. capitalism was intrinsically tied up with the creation of a world capitalist system, as the ability to usurp resources from-‐-‐and export goods to-‐-‐foreign markets was seen as crucial for continuous economic growth. In a 1944 congressional testimony, Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson pinpointed the core of the problem when he proclaimed: “It is a problem of markets. We have got to see [that] what the country produces is used and sold under financial arrangements which make its production possible. Under a different economic system, you could use the entire production of the country in the United States, but under our system of market mechanism, the government must look to foreign markets” (Hossein-‐Zadeh, 2006, p. 79). Along the same line of reasoning, State Department post-‐war planner Benjamin Cohen argued that “a major need of the post-‐war U.S. economy [was] to create purchasing power outside of [the U.S.] which [could] be converted into domestic purchasing power through exportation” (Hossein-‐Zadeh, 2006, p. 49-‐50).
Thus, it was argued that in order to ensure the long-‐term viability of U.S. capitalism, the United States would not only have to smoothen its business cycles by employing the Keynesian framework of government deficit spending, it would also need to open, secure and enure that foreign markets flourished through U.S. imperialism (Coyne & Duncan, 2013, p. 221). In other
the U.S. established order “went way beyond restructuring schemes on a national level; they amounted to a comprehensive restructuring, or rescue mission, of capitalism on a global level” (Hossein-‐Zadeh, 2006, p. 53). This was a mission in which the U.S. military would play a pivotal role.
1.3 Post-‐war U.S. Imperialism and the emergence of permanent U.S. militarism
In constructing a world capitalist system conducive to capital penetration and circulation, the U.S. ruling elite faced a number of monumental challenges: they had to help rebuild many of the world’s war-‐torn economies, re-‐establish the paralyzed international trade system, and curtail or roll back governmental involvement in the economic realm of many countries, as the events of the Great Depression and World War II had effectively supplanted ‘the invisible hand of the market’ by government sponsored reforms and government-‐regulated economies of war (Stokes, 2005, 221; Hossein-‐Zadeh, 2006, p. 49, 53).
The challenges of reconstruction and re-‐establishing international trade and economic interdependence were met rather peacefully, as they predominantly involved high levels of U.S. foreign direct investment into Europe and Japan, together with the formation of such U.S.-‐ dominated multilateral financial institutions as the IMF and the World Bank. However, the curtailment of government involvement in the economic lives of many countries proved much harder to accomplish by ways of consent (Hossein-‐Zadeh, 2006, p. 50; Stokes, 2005, p. 222). This was especially apparent in the less-‐developed world, where many countries opted for a socialist-‐oriented path of development and where anti-‐colonial national liberation struggles often went hand in hand with anti-‐capitalist revolutions. Accordingly, the resistance to the American project of world capitalism was fierce (Hossein-‐Zadeh, 2006, 53).
However, as the socialist-‐oriented path of development threatened to restrict the global mobility of U.S. capital and forestall the creation of a liberal international economic order, the United States’ response was even fiercer. From proxy wars, counter-‐insurgency campaigns, ‘containment and rollback’, to covert coups to unseat insufficiently pro-‐U.S. governments, the United States used its military power extensively during the Cold War to “safeguard and keep
open global markets and resources to U.S. capital” (Hossein-‐Zadeh, 2006, p. 1; Stokes, 2005, p. 223).
1.4 Ongoing military operations and high military spending in the post-‐Cold War
era
Morality aside, for the greater part of the twentieth century, U.S. militarism and concomitant high military spending can be justified based on economic grounds, as permanent war proved quite profitable not only for the U.S. ruling class, but also for the average American citizen. As U.S. military power helped create an international liberal economic order in which the American economy could survive and flourish, it brought the United States’ citizens significant economic gains. Such gains were felt either directly, by way of military or defence-‐related jobs, or indirectly, through benefits that flowed from the opening up of foreign markets to U.S. capital (Hossein-‐Zadeh, 2006; Stokes, 2005).
However, as professor Hossein-‐Zadeh points out, “this pattern of economic gains flowing from [U.S.] military operations seems to have somewhat changed in recent years, especially in the post-‐Cold War world” (Hossein-‐Zadeh, 2006, p. 2). Apart from the fact that technological developments during the Cold War radically reduced the labour intensiveness of military production and thus the degree to which military spending boosts the economy, in the post-‐ Cold War era, U.S. military operations had become ever more wasteful and cost-‐inefficient. Indeed, according to some, these operations have since become so economically burdensome, that it is no longer possible to justify them on economic grounds, at least not for the average American citizen (Hossein-‐Zadeh, 2006, p. 1-‐3).
If not on economic grounds, then how does the U.S. Military substatiate its sustained and high defence expenditure after the end of the Cold War? According to the United States’ official justificatory discourse, in the post-‐Cold War era, the threat of “rogue states, global terrorism, the axis of evil, [and, more recently], enemies of democracy” to U.S. national interests have necessitated the United States’ continuous expansion of its military establishment (Cunningham, 2004, p. 558; Hossein-‐Zadeh, 2006, p. 23).
Without denying that these threats are real, some scholars have argued that post-‐Cold War U.S. defence spending seems to be out of sync with the threat that rogue states or global terrorists actually pose to the U.S. national interest. Cunningham, for example, pointed out that in 2004, the U.S. spent approximately “26 times the combined total of [what] the six ‘rogue states’ (Iran, North Korea, Syria, Cuba, Sudan and Libya) spent on defence,” while Coyne and Duncan emphasize that in 2010, the U.S. spent 29% more on defence than it did at the height of the Cold War in 1986. In their own words: “there has been a nearly 30% increase in spending to fight a variety of enemies not classified as a world superpower, as the Soviet Union was through the 1980s” (Coyne & Duncan, 2012, p. 417; Cunningham, 2004, p. 558).
The fact that sustained high U.S. military spending in the post-‐Cold War era cannot be adequately rationalized on economic grounds nor by national security arguments has led critics to formulate a number of alternative explanations. One of the most popular explanations attributes ongoing U.S. militarism and concomitant high military spending in the post-‐Cold War era to the powerful ascent of “neoconservative militarists”: an influential group of ideologues “bent on spreading the American economic and political system, along with American power and influence” (Hossein-‐Zadeh, 2006, p. 2). A second and related explanation revolves around the political inadequacies of George W. Bush as president. Proponents of this view consider Bush’s need to maintain his strong status as commander in chief and his desire to be looked upon as a ‘war president’ as major causes of ongoing U.S. militarism in the 21st century. The third, and probably most widely-‐held alternative view is that U.S. militarism of late is driven by an American desire to secure access to more and cheaper sources of gas and oil (Hossein-‐ Zadeh, 2006, p. 2-‐3).
Without denying the importance and contributory role of these previous explanations, in the remainder of this thesis I will focus on theories that attribute the United States’ drive to war and militarism to the influence of those elite domestic interests that are vested in the business of war and military expansion. However, before looking at theories of elite domination in more detail, let us consider some of the most important consequences of permanent militarism on the American society.
02 The impact of permanent
U.S. militarism on the American society
2.1 The social and spiritual consequences of permanent militarism for American society
Besides the grave and lasting impact U.S. militarism has had on the lives of millions of people worldwide, it has also fundamentally shaped American society itself. As scholars discussing the strands of literature on American militarism and the American war economy point out, the continuous war efforts by the United States have influenced American society profoundly in spiritual, economical and political ways (Cunningham, 2004; Duncan & Coyne, 2013; Melman, 2003).
Trillions of dollars have been spent on military and defence since the 1940s, establishing a vast and entrenched national security apparatus that reaches into virtually all domains of American life (Cunningham, 2004). As such, U.S. militarism has created an ”entangled system” in which not only profound amounts of labour and resources are allocated to military purposes, but in which various other institutions in society are shaped in synchrony with military goals (Farish & Vitale, 2010).
Universities, primary and secondary schools, the media and popular culture all have been influenced by decennia of U.S. militarism (Cunningham, 2004). From what can be gathered from university research predominantly funded by the Department of Defence, to Hollywood’s war-‐nostalgic films like Black Hawk Down or Saving Private Ryan, to TV-‐shows and video games that glorify the use of violence, militarism is an ideology and a set of practices that has invaded every sector of American life (Cunningham, 2004; Lutz, 2002; Guerlain, 2013).
In her ethnographic study on the effects of militarization on American society, Catherine Lutz describes how such a process has brought about a “shift in general societal beliefs and values necessary to legitimize the use of violence”. This, in turn, has resulted in ‘a military definition of reality’ undermining and even replacing the common sense of the nation. American militarization has resulted in the deeply and widely held belief that “humans are by nature aggressive and territorial, that force is the only way to get things done in the world, and that if one weapon creates security, 1.000 weapons create that much more” (Lutz, 2002, p. 724-‐725). Furthermore, Lutz demonstrates how militarism has reshaped social relations between those who might benefit from militarization and those who do not, but have to bear some of its costs anyway. In part, this is also where an American resistance to social welfare benefits comes from, as militarism divides American society between “those soldiers and veterans with universal health care, a living wage, and other benefits, and those without them” (Lutz, 2002, p. 724).
2.2 The economic consequences of permanent U.S. militarism
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone, it is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children
(Eisenhower, ‘Chance for Peace’ speech, 1953).
However important as social and spiritual consequences of American militarism may be, it is the realm of economics that has arguably been influenced most, as ongoing high military expenditures have given rise to a permanent war economy that interacts with and subsumes the private, non-‐military economy. Even though there are intellectuals like O’Connell who argue in favour of the permanent war economy by pointing out the fact that it has yielded a host of beneficial technologies such as the internet, civilian nuclear power and GPS Navigation, most scholars discussing the strand of literature on the economic consequences of military spending take a more critical position (Cunningham, 2004; Coyne & Duncan, 2012; Guerlain, 2013; Melman, 2003; O’Connell, 2012;).
Coyne, Duncan and Melman, for example, have written excellent works on the opportunity costs that accompany military spending. Opportunity cost can be defined as the cost of an alternative that must be forgone in order to pursue a certain action. In the case of military spending, the most obvious opportunity cost is the money spent on the war economy, as this allocated resource clearly can not be used to build infrastructure, provide social services or enhance the quality of facilities such as public schools.
Over the last 65 years, the United States has annually spent 50 to 70 percent of its discretionary budget on military spending, thereby redirecting much-‐needed resources away from its private economy (White House, n.d.). This has led to a situation in which the United States ‘pays’ for its military power abroad with a wide range of domestic problems including, but not limited to the most expensive and least effective healthcare system in the world, a deteriorating infrastructure, a mediocre education system in comparison with the rest of the world, 7.7 million Americans living in “worst case housing” and 1 out of 5 American children born into poverty (CommonWealth Fund, 2014; Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2015; Feeding America, 2014; Melman, 2013; Ryan, 2013). All of these factors are important and startling indicators of what has been forgone as a result of the United States’ permanent war economy.
03 American politics, who governs?
The powers of ordinary men are circumscribed by the everyday worlds in which they live, yet even in these rounds of job, family, and neighbourhood they often seem driven by forces they can neither understand nor govern. 'Great changes' are beyond their control, but affect their conduct and outlook nonetheless. (C. Wright
Mills, The Power Elite, 1956).
3.1 Theories of American politics
Considering the grave social, spiritual and economic consequences of sustained high military expenditures on American society, how are we to explain the fact that annually, the United States continues to spend huge amounts of resources on its military in excess of what is needed for maintaining national security? What are the forces that are keeping the United States in a state of permanent military preparedness despite the overall negative effects of high military spending on its society?
To answer this question, it is crucial to understand who actually governs the United States. Is it the broad body of U.S. citizens who are shaping public policy through democratic institutions, or do economic elites and special interest groups dominate policy-‐making by way of lobbying and fraternizing with public officials? Within the body of literature on American politics, three important theoretical families can be discerned, each offering different hypotheses as to which actors have how much influence over shaping public policy: Majoritarian Electoral Democracy, Economic-‐Elite Domination and Biased Pluralism (Gilens & Page, 2014).
Theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy emphasize the sway of the median voter, attributing U.S. governmental policies to the collective will of the average citizen (Hacker & Pierson, 2010; Gilens & Page, 2014, p. 565). The average citizen, or median-‐voter, is understood as the “swing voter in the middle of the distribution of opinion and income among voters” and
is allegedly able to discipline politicians through “electoral reward and punishment” (Gilens & Page, 2014, p. 566; Hacker & Pierson, 2010, p. 154). According to majoritarian theories, policy preferences of the median voter drive policy-‐making as vote-‐seeking parties tend to place themselves in the centre of voters’ most preferred positions (Gilens & Page, 2014).
The tradition of Economic-‐Elite Domination asserts that “U.S. policy-‐making is dominated by individuals who have substantial economic resources, including, but not limited to, ownership of business firms” (Gilens & Page, 2014, p. 566). This tradition emphasizes how economic elites “may dominate key issues in U.S. policymaking despite the existence of democratic elections”, as they exert political influence through foundations, the media and lobbyists (Gilens & Page, 2014, p. 566).
Finally, theories of Biased Pluralism focus on the role of business-‐oriented interest groups in shaping public policy. Corporations, businesses and professional associations are said to influence public policy by lobbying and fraternizing with public officials, moving through the revolving door of public and private employment, providing self-‐serving information to officials and by spending a great amount of money on electoral campaigns (Hacker & Pierson, 2010; Gilens & Page, 2014, p. 567).
3.2 Which theoretical tradition best captures the reality of American politics?
While the aforementioned theoretical traditions have given rise to substantial bodies of literature, each supported by a great deal of empirical evidence concerning the importance of various sets of agents, the different predictions of these theories have seldom been tested against each other within a single statistical model, thereby making it difficult to assess which group of actors have the most power in shaping public policy (Gilens & Page, 2014, p. 564). However, in their Princeton University study “Testing Theories of American Politics”, Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page have done exactly this. By looking at a unique data set that includes the policy preferences of average citizens, economic elites and organized interest groups on 1,779 policy issues and comparing it to what policies actually ended up becoming law, Gilens and Page were able to “analyse the independent effects of each set of actors upon policythe policy preferences of each set of actors and what actions the government actually took, Gilens and Page have been able to elucidate how much independent influence average citizens, economic elites and organized interest groups have over shaping public policy.
In an ideal, democratic America, the likelihood of Congress passing a law would reflect the degree of public support on that given issue. For example, if 50% of the public supported an idea, there would be a 50% chance of it becoming law. If 80% of the public supported it, there would be an 80% chance. The plotted line for such an ideal democracy can be seen in figure 1, with the X-‐axis representing the public support for any given idea and the Y-‐axis representing the likelihood of Congress
passing a law that reflects any of these ideas (Represent.us, n.d.).
What Gilens and Page found however, was rather unsettling and in opposition to what one would expect in a functioning democracy: the preferences of average citizens seem to have a “non-‐significant, near zero” impact on U.S. policy-‐making (Gilens & Page, 2014, p. 572). Their findings show that “when one holds constant net interest group alignment (that is, the preferences of organized interest groups) and the preferences of affluent Americans, it makes very little difference what the general
public thinks. The probability of policy change is nearly the same, around 30%, whether a tiny minority or a large majority of average citizens favour a proposed policy change” (see figure 2) Figure 1: The ideal governmental representation of the average American citizen.
Source: Represent Us, n.d.
Figure 2: The actual governmental representation of the average American citizen.
(Gilens & Page, 2014, p. 572). This means that the number of American voters for or against any policy issue has no independent impact on the likelihood that Congress will make it law (Represent.us, n.d.). Pure theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy, which posit that “the driving force behind policy change is the ability of the median voter to discipline politicians through the electoral connection” can therefore decisively be rejected (Gilens & Page, 2014, p. 572; Hacker & Pierson, 2010, p. 154).
By contrast, the study also showed that both economic elites and business-‐oriented interest groups have a “large, highly significant and independent” impact on U.S. policy. According to Gilens and Page, “reality is best captured by mixed theories in which both individual economic elites and organized interest groups
(including corporations, largely owned and controlled by wealthy elites) play a substantial part in affecting public policy, but the general public has little or no independent influence” (Gilens & Page, 2014, p. 572). This means that the flat line in figure 2 only accounts for the bottom 90% of income earners in America (since Gilens and Page have taken policy preferences at the ninetieth income percentile as proxies for the preferences of economic elites). Taken
together, economic elites and business-‐oriented interest groups, those who can afford lobbyists, get their own line, which is much closer to the ideal of figure 1(see figure 3) (Represent.us, n.d.). Even though a strong status quo bias remains evident, when economic elites and organized economic interests want something, the government is much more likely to do it. Conversely, when they don’t, the likelihood of the idea becoming adopted by the government is very low. Indeed, they even have the power to completely stop it from happening (Gilens & Page, 2014, p. 572; Represent.us, n.d.)
Figure 3: The governmental representation of economic elites and business-‐oriented interest groups
