[Salon] Defense Budget: Conservatives Plan a ‘National-Defense Renaissance’ at over $1.2 Trillion in Defense Spending | National Review

[Todd Pierce <todd.e.pierce@icloud.com>]

This is an older article but correctly states the problem, even if there wasn’t the “Red Wave” The American Conservative magazine predicted, and looked forward to so much. But I never got it sent until now as not languished in my Drafts folder. Now with my stop at the Eisenhower Library last week, I have more confirmation of my criticism of the “New Right,” and the lying liars that promote it! Which incidentally, I make a similar argument elsewhere by email against the Democratic Party Militarists.

As bad as Biden and the Democrat’s militarist right-wing is, things can get worse, far worse even, though that’s hard to believe looking only at “surface appearances,” as is routine, especially for “pragmatic Americans.” But per the attached files, I would argue that as near as we are today to both fascism and nuclear annihilation, it is past time that we begin “thinking critically” in the Arendtian sense of “political theory.” When that is done, as she did in the “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” one necessarily seeks the “origin” of political phenomena, whether domestic politics, or international war, and can begin to see beneath “surface appearances,” as is absolutely necessary today if there is to be any hope of avoiding the calamitous outcome awaiting us on our present course.  

That would begin with tracing the ideological genealogy of “ideas,” which are the forerunner to political “acts,” such as war, which we have determined to make our “way of life.” Under both major US political parties. In the case of the Democrats today, that "ideological lineage" runs back through the Scoop Jackson Democrats, who in turn, ideologically, as to “Ideological Militarism,” were in direct succession to, and in parallel with, the “Traditional Conservatives” whose articulated ideology they adopted. That was, as articulated by the ideological founders of the so-called “Conservative Movement,” Willmoore Kendall and James Burnham, in particular. Who in turn, represented the Joe McCarthy/Roy Cohn fascist element of post-WW II politics, which Donald Trump has a direct line to, via Roy Cohn, as is well covered. 

Anticipating someone sneering that I don’t “understand” Traditional Conservatives, I attach a Kendall article, a centerpiece of Kendall’s “Conservative Affirmation,” which Andrew Bacevich chose to include in his book: "American Conservatism: Reclaiming an Intellectual Tradition.” And if he wants claim these assorted militarists made this book a panegyric to, who am I to argue? 

So in that single sense, Bacevich’s panegyric is useful, as revealing so much of the ideological militarists who brought into existence as “Conservatism,” the "political philosophy” of the Military Industrial Complex, and its attendant wars.  

Today’s “Traditional Conservatives, meaning the “New Right” of the TAC crowd and their West-Coast Straussian collaborators, fallaciously claim that their “Conservative Tradition” opposed US wars of the past; shifting all blame for them in this century on to the Democrats, as with Wilson and WW I. While omitting that in every case, especially WW I, it was the Republicans/Conservatives who clamored first and loudest for war, to include its predecessor, the Spanish-American War/Philippine-American War, as with another one of Bacevich’s favorite Conservatives, Teddy Roosevelt! A pattern continued with the run-up to WW II, notwithstanding domestic opposition to Roosevelt, coming from both Left and Right, with the “Right” opposition including actual fascist sympathizers which helps explain their “opposition.”  At the conclusion of the War, many of them would seamlessly become the “Conservative Movement,” most notably Joe McCarthy, with his collaborators, the aforesaid, Kendall and Buckley, as Kendall’s panegyric to McCarthy below makes clear, as does his entire corpus of fascist oriented writings, so worshipped today by Trumpites. 

While I was directed to read those writings, which I’ve done, they only served to confirm that these “Conservatives,” in the guise of “Anti-Communists,” had a lot in common with those German “Anti-Communists,” pre-WW II, many of whom were brought to the US post-WW II under Operation Paper-Clip, to “work” for the US Military-Intell Complex, and make “cultural contributions” to our own “world-view,” as disseminated by the Conservative Movement most emphatically. And in that, they accused Eisenhower of many things, all of which would make him a “RINO” in today’s Republican Party, not least because his “anti-communism” was from the perspective of “national defense,” held in check by respect for the Constitution and the Rule of Law, contrary to the McCarthyite/Cohn/Kendall/Burnhamites who attacked him relentlessly in virtually demanding immediate war against both the USSR and “Red China” during the Cold War. 

And today, as we saw in 2015-onward, one propaganda meme employed by the New Right, on behalf of Trump, DeSantos, et al, as political micro-targeting those people who are genuinely war-weary, or who opposed the wars from the 1990s on, is, as TAC lies, that the “Conservative Republicans” intend to "end the endless wars.” By war-spending us into national suicide, as the Republicans are planning here. And to prove that these lies work with gullible people, is the relentless claim that the Republicans who voted against Ukraine aid are heralded as seeking to end the Ukraine War, with the “Right” concealing their actual motives as some variation of "it isn’t enough,” or, “we need to spend more for war against China.” 

But on may way to AZ to escape MN’s winter, I stopped at the Eisenhower Library to research a couple topics, to include Eisenhower’s relationship/opinion of the Right, which was totally negative, as seeing them correctly as they were, as a variation of fascism. Making the “New Right’s” claim to Eisenhower’s less militaristic foreign policy, while adhering to and promoting the “Trad. Conservatism” of the aforementioned extreme militarists, virtually a case of “Stolen Valor,” given how opposed Eisenhower was to the right-wing fanatics of his day, whose legacy lives on today in the so-called, TAC-defined, “New Right.” 

Goldwater, as one of these fanatics, used the phrase “Grow up Conservatives,” which I won’t go into its context here. But the same should be said of those few who actually do want to end the wars: Grow up, and get serious in understanding how we are being duped into Perpetual War, led by the fanatics who can never get enough war-spending, and/or, can never reward war-profiteering Oligarchs enough with ever-larger financial benefits. But I have no optimism that is even a possibility anymore. 

  

  

Attachment: Wolin_Political Theory as a Vocation (highlighted).pdf
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Attachment: Chapter 1 Introduction.pdf
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Attachment: The Pons Asinorum of Contemporary Conservatism.pdf
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https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/conservatives-plan-a-national-defense-renaissance-at-over-1-2-trillion-in-defense-spending/

Conservatives Plan a ‘National-Defense Renaissance’ at over $1.2 Trillion in Defense Spending

September 6, 2022 10:54 AM

Senator Roger Wicker (R., Miss.,) listens to Governor Gina Raimondo during a hearing on her nomination to be Commerce secretary on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., January 26, 2021. (Tom Williams/Pool via Reuters)none

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There’s an underappreciated sea change underway in how conservatives are approaching the U.S. defense budget. As Congress finalizes this year’s defense-spending-authorization bill, a number of high-profile Republican policy makers have started to call for a budget topline that exceeds $1.2 trillion. For context, lawmakers last year authorized $768 billion in military spending.

In short, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China’s stepped-up intimidation of Taiwan, and Iran’s progress toward a nuclear weapon have all convinced some officials to advocate for a figure that far exceeds even what some GOP defense hawks have called for in recent years.

Writing in June for Foreign Policy magazine, H. R. McMaster argued that an “unstable and dangerous world” rife with heightened aggression from authoritarian adversaries should lead the U.S. to spend 4.5 percent of GDP on defense — which he said is equivalent to about $1.2 trillion. Here’s what the piece, co-authored with Forum for American Leadership’s Gabriel Scheinmann, explains:

Russia and China were emboldened, in part, because the United States undertook the greatest drawdown of military power since the collapse of the British empire. In 1990, the U.S. military had about 266,000 service members stationed in Europe; by the end of 2021, it was only about 65,000 service members. In 1989, the U.S. Army had 5,000 tanks permanently stationed in West Germany alone; by 2014, there were zero on the entire continent. In 1990, the United States had 5,000 nuclear bombs forward deployed in Western Europe; today, it has around 150 nuclear bombs. Until the 2014 start of Russia’s war in Ukraine and despite NATO enlargement, not a single U.S. service member was permanently stationed farther east than during the Cold War. In Asia, where the Chinese People’s Liberation Army has more than 2 million ground force personnel and the Chinese navy is now the largest in the world, the United States’ active-duty Army has been cut by one-third since 1990. The U.S. Navy has 40 percent fewer sailors in Asia and will soon have only half the number of active warships it had stationed there in 1990. In 2019, China conducted more ballistic missile tests than the rest of the world combined. Recent reports show that China is expected to quadruple the size of its nuclear arsenal by decade’s end.

The policy of restraint continues to limit the U.S. defense budget. At the close of the century, China and Russia together spent 13 percent of what the United States spends on defense. Today, that number is 67 percent. . . .

The United States must end its unilateral restraint vis-à-vis Russia and China and be realistic about the nature of the adversaries it faces. First, the United States must rearm, and the defense budget must increase. It must pay for new capabilities that counter and exceed those China and Russia have invested in. The Joint Forces must be substantially bigger to deter Russian and Chinese aggression as well as be able to respond to multiple, simultaneous contingencies. In today’s dollars, achieving even the Cold War-era floor of spending 4.5 percent of GDP on defense would mean a $1.2 trillion budget.

Others, such as McMaster’s former national-security-council colleague, Matt Pottinger, have advocated an even larger budget, in light of the growing partnership between Beijing and Moscow. Earlier this year, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Pottinger said that the U.S. should immediately double its current defense spending:

The U.S., he says, also needs a show of strength and determination: “What we have to do is double our defense spending immediately. We’re still spending about half of what we spent as a percentage of GDP during the Reagan administration, and the Reagan administration wasn’t even the peak of our Cold War spending.” Can the U.S. afford a $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget? “Our defense expenditures are minor in comparison to our entitlement programs. Universal healthcare is an amazing thing, but it’s not going to save Europe and Taiwan or, in the end, our own national security and way of life.”

Since neither of these officials are currently in government, the task will fall to enterprising lawmakers to craft a defense-spending proposal that enables Washington to keep pace with an increasingly dangerous set of adversaries. Depending on the GOP’s performance this fall, Republicans may be setting the agenda at either the House Armed Services Committee, the Senate Armed Services Committee, or both. Whatever happens in November, at least one lawmaker favored to lead Republicans on the Senate panel has already signaled his support of a significantly more robust topline figure.

Senator Roger Wicker, the odds-on favorite to become the top GOP member on Senate Armed Services, recently published a blueprint of sorts for a “national-defense renaissance” at NRO, suggesting that a similar level of at least 5 percent of GDP is necessary to maintain U.S. competitiveness:

The Senate Armed Services Committee has heard repeatedly from defense experts that the U.S. should spend 5 to 8 percent of GDP on defense for the foreseeable future to keep pace with China and other threats. President Biden does not seem to understand this. He has consistently proposed less than 3.5 percent of GDP for defense. Congress jettisoned the President’s meager top-line last year in favor of a substantially higher number, and we are preparing to do so again in FY2023. Smart defense planning would dictate a spending increase to 5 percent of GDP at minimum to thwart our military’s atrophy.

None of these officials is likely to shape this year’s defense budget to the degree that they’ve recently advocated; the bill currently authorizes $840 billion in spending, which is still more than what President Biden proposed. But a changing political landscape may soon offer up some new opportunities.