On 1 July 2020, the Joint Democratic and Republican House Armed Services Committee unanimously approved a record $740.5bn for military spending in the next year. This is three times more than China spends on its military and 15 times more than Russia; and it is more than the combined military spending of the next 15 countries.
Additionally, this Committee delayed Trump’s proposed troop withdrawal from Germany, and from the US’s 19-year war in Afghanistan following an agreement with the Taliban made in February. It ensured that Saudi Arabia can still bomb Yemen without an investigation, and it removed any restriction on the Trump administration from withdrawing from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. This unity of the two US main political parties, at a time of economic crisis, deepening poverty and Covid-19 sickness, demonstrates the nature of imperialism, terrorising any opponents to its global plunder, and its indifference to the working masses. It also tells us that individual presidents can say what they want, but that state monopoly capital – here in the form of the military-industrial complex – leads the show.
The momentum for this obsessive militarism has been spurred by anti-Russian stories. This useful foreign ‘enemy’ has been accused of promoting Trump, promoting Brexit, promoting Bernie Sanders, and paying the Taliban to shoot US troops (as if they needed motivation) and so on. That the key US strategic priority is now the Pacific is beside the point. It is China that is being targeted economically, hemmed in, away from western markets, but currently it would be undiplomatic to raise the question of open military conflict with China. Russia has been the ‘enemy’ since 1917, ingrained in the US ruling class’s anti-communist culture, and still serves its purpose. However, the weapons voted for in July will be used anywhere that US imperialism thinks necessary to maintain its current global position.
Alvaro Michaels
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 277 August/September 2020
