Forget about stopping the purported evil despot Vladimir Putin intent on taking over all of Europe and maybe the rest of the world. Forget about helping — try to keep a straight face on this one — the democracy and freedom supporting nation of Ukraine. United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken was out last week promoting a new reason to continue supporting the Ukraine War — ensuring there are more American jobs in the military-industrial complex.
Speaking Thursday in a joint press conference with Britain Foreign Secretary David Cameron, Blinken propounded as follows:
If you look at the investments that we made in Ukraine’s defense to deal with this aggression, 90 percent of the security assistance we provided has actually been spent here in the United States with our manufacturers, with our production, and that’s produced more American jobs, more growth in our own economy. So this has also been a win-win that we need to continue.
There are a few problems with that statement.
First, Blinken is promoting pursuing war for profit. This is a low to which American warmongers have usually not dared to stoop — at least in public pronouncements.
Second, this government spending for war is not investment, despite Blinken’s labeling it as such. Instead, it is the spending of taxes paid into the US government or of money newly created by decree that reduces the value of Americans’ earnings and actual investments. “Theft” is a better descriptor of the activity Blinken touts than is “investment.”
Third, Blinken here is basically admitting that the Ukraine War funding is a boondoggle benefiting special interests. By this point most people have come to accept what anyone paying attention early on knew long ago: The US supplying weapons to Ukraine would never help Ukraine win the war; Russia would win the war despite such aid. What the aid does do, though, is deliver heaps of dollars to people and companies associated with the military-industrial complex and Ukrainians who extract their portions — special interests. The Ukraine War could have been settled by negotiation long ago, but special interests have been keen to prevent peace that would shut off the money spigot.
Fourth, feeding this money to the military-industrial complex strengthens the national-security state, a major threat to the well-being and liberty of Americans.
Fifth, feeding this money to the military-industrial complex makes the military-industrial complex bigger and stronger, enabling it to more effectively push for both more war and more war spending in the future. This will help perpetuate the cycle of US destructive intervention around the world.
Sixth, saying there will be economic advantage from the US spending on weapons for Ukraine is expressing an economic fallacy of the sort Frédéric Bastiat described in his 1850 essay “That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Not Seen.” Blinken points out for us to see additional jobs for armament workers, all the while wishing to keep unseen the harm to others caused by his war promotion. The production of weapons for Ukraine is an extreme wealth, and life, destroying activity. For Americans, the weapons provide no benefit. The weapons are just sent off to be used overseas, delivering no net gain in wealth, safety, or other benefit for Americans from the spending. Some military-industrial complex people make money. But, they are able to do so only because the US government directs money to them at the cost of it not reaching instead other workers who would produce wealth-building goods and services that Americans desire. The weapons then are used overseas to cause an enormous amount of wealth destruction, death, and suffering.
Blinken calls US war aid to Ukraine a win-win. However, it actually is a lose-lose.
