Converting Military-Industrial Complex for Civilian Use

Large military contractors can continue to make a killing (no pun intended) for their shareholders if half of their military hardware and development was converted towards social benefit.




Previously, The Pragmatist covered the need to utilize the high tech assembly lines, research and development labs, and sophisticated blue collar job creation potential of the current American military-corporate behemoth. Reasons were given.

Now perhaps it is time to look at a few general things that can be accomplished by the declining American empire to avoid the mistakes that Soviet military-industrial complex experienced. This means setting certain long term civilian procurement goals for the American complex that:

1) keep current technical/industrial personnel in place and employed
2) gently push the personnel towards reorientation and training of others
3) make use of existing assets and existing assembly lines
4) require minimal retooling of assembly lines
5) take advantage of economies of scale and export opportunities
6) create new interesting synergies with civilian corporations and civilian personnel
7) create opportunities for technology transfers from abroad
8) require merger with domestic and foreign civilian corporations to aid in economy of scale creation
9) ultimately improve national infrastructure through raising electrical output, transport efficiency, etc
10) maintain/increase employment within R&D departments so as not to lose scientists abroad yet systematically refocus them towards greater civilian purpose
11) ultimately assist in transfer of non-sensitive scientific research and prototypes to civilian corporations, universities, and start ups with minimal red tape

In other words, the 600 billion a year high tech sword maker is partially remade into a high tech plow maker and assistant/trainer of additional plow makers. Every military branch up as well as exotic weapons development can  be made useful. Ultimately a DARPA equivalent for infrastructure should come into existence to complement and work together with DARPA itself. Some examples:

A fleet of floating federally owned nuclear reactors to power coastal cities and those regions hit by near future super-hurricanes

Large government orders (from companies responsible for design and construction of small fission reactors for nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers) for 30-100 floating nuclear reactors and Alaska bound icebreakers. This ensures not just a continual development of small (and hopefully modular) fission reactors but a way to compete with Russians in this area when it comes to exploiting the north pole. A big export opportunity is of course also created. When the inevitable second wave of the financial crisis arrives, it is vital that key fission reactor core companies are locked into long term contracts of concrete social use (since construction of most submarines, aircraft carriers, battlecruisers, and destroyers will be cancelled/halted). This will preserve the essential core within the physical assembly and nuclear research workforce. Electrical energy will always be needed especially if it is clean and relatively portable the way modular 50-250 MW range fission is. There are of course more uses other than energy such as nuclear desalination and floating material processing.

Older cruisers and destroyers can be converted into floating power plants rather than decommissioned, sold, and/or scrapped. They are well protected and armored. Unfortunately, older aircraft carriers are too function specific and are better off sold.

When it comes to airplanes, Lockheed-Martin's converted C-130J Super Hercules airplane can even be a flying power plant that lands to serve emergency hit areas. In case of plane failure, the bathtub fission reactor can disengage and land by parachute. Once again, the assembly lines have been there for decades, retooling will be minimal. Joining corporate forces with makers of the enormous Antonov transport planes is a good idea.

Using General Dynamics built tanks as high speed rural workhorses to keep the plants from shutting down

It is possible to create giant small fission reactor powered tracked transport platforms by splicing multiple M1-Abrams tank platforms into one. Transport of ore from mines or of very large objects such as additional fission reactors and infrastructure parts comes to mind. General Dynamics need not stop mass production of their war machines, just retool for speedy rural tracked platform development in coordination with John Deere company. Conversion of tanks into heartland workhorses will be psychologically pleasing to large segment of the American population. In fact, synergy can be created in terms of tracked platform production between military and civilian assembly lines, each adding its own unique capabilities.

Clothing and accessories

The unfortunate and corrupt trend of police militarization has already created a tendency for the military to equip local police, even when it is ridiculous overkill. With eventual end of the tyrannical drug prohibition and dramatic scaling down of American empire, the military oriented corporations can still continue to mass produce uniforms, bulletproof vests/ceramic armor, helmets, and gear for police units of the North American continent and of those around the world. Russia has recently began a process of large scale conversion of uniforms to meet American standards and there is no reason for American companies to not make money off that. There is also the issue of eventually equipping of international police forces. No other government spends (wastes) as many resources per soldier as US and all that needs to happen is to take advantage of economies of scale for anything ranging from boots to shovels to wearable computer systems. Nothing stops United States from becoming a companion to China in terms of being a "factory of the world" in certain areas. Equipping the entire world's police with cheap, quality, cutting edge equipment also goes further towards standardizing policing practices and making US the global gendarme than current crude aggression. A high tech police state of 310 million people can also flood the market with such mundane things as latest civilian construction helmets, firefighter attire, mining equipment, etc.

Army Corps of Engineers to aid in deconstruction of suburbia, jump starting infrastructure development, and rapid training of civilian cadres for domestic nation building

The current government tendency to reduce youth unemployment and civil unrest through AmeriCorps will take on an intensified desperate form as robotic automation and national rot speeds up. Use of military engineers for crack training serves to empower civilians and provide a real sense of "nation building" while power boosting  infrastructure development. Although it is tempting to hire cheap Chinese labor, rural American peasants have shown an amazing tendency to tirelessly work patrolling streets of Middle Eastern and Central Asian countries. They exert themselves again gladly if given actual domestic programs and empowering teaching/work positions as an "elite" labor class. Army Corps of Engineers should be dramatically expanded with those in the army retrained for it.

Systems Engineering for national renewal

Just the way a map of an occupied country can be broken up into problem areas and stable areas, North America can be broken up into areas needing additional electrification/water supplies/employment/terraforming. A corrupt to the bone declining rotting oligarchic society needs a systems approach for tangible rebirth to start occurring. Only this approach will reduce span of renewal by 1-2 decades rather than extend it into the 2040s. All efforts must be made to prevent Chinese style fascist model from becoming a role model for the world. As noted, US military is the last bastion of national elites that are the most technically competent and that are the least parasitic on the whole social body (surprising as this may sound considering they are also the biggest budgetary burden and physical protector of the banking establishment). Instead of gutting and starving them, making use of them and their functional abilities stands to make the transition period a lot more pleasant.

These are some of the examples that come to mind. We will return to more uses for this gargantuan death machine in the future (over 50 countries killed in the last half a century making US government biggest serial killer in the world since WW2).

Military-Industrial Complex Reform

Since defense industry is the backbone of US economy and employs millions of people, it needs to be transformed into an engine of productive national renewal rather than be sharply and rapidly slashed




The military-industrial complex has been the biggest real sector of the American economy since World War 2. The total amount of money poured into defense (and defense related expenditures which wouldn't otherwise exist) is now over 1 trillion dollars annually. Utilizing this proper counting of expenditures (rather than official breakdown that shows defense as just 1/4 of the total budget), the federal government spends 1/3 to almost 1/2 of all money it gets on defense (one may argue that it is even more when costs of years of counter-insurgency warfare are added but let's look at the basics for now).

Millions of Americans get their paychecks either directly or indirectly from the government in this manner. As such, making rapid sharp cuts in the defense budget (under either ideological or budget balancing pretext) would greatly exacerbate dangers to social stability and American domestic national security. Even modest cuts in defense will throw hundreds of thousands of additional citizens out of work and push the current real level of unemployment (20% or 1 out of 5 Americans without a job) to being worse than during the Great Depression. Possibility of serious social eruption with real violence is increased if this final solid industrial pillar of US economy is touched. Even with rather overpriced weaponry, US is still the biggest weapons dealer on the planet. In addition to quantitatively unmatched weapons exports to satellite nations and ideological allies, the government's military purchases is the last thing keeping remaining top notch American factories from being shut down.

Obama administration seems to realize this as has every president for the past 50 years. He prudently extended the GI Bill to send Iraq and Afghanistan occupation veterans to college. It is safer to have Iraqi war vets drinking liquor in college than sitting unemployed, armed, and boiling with personal or political resentment in an economically depressed town or city. Obama and Gates also mostly cut weapons systems so far that are in their research and development phase rather than full production phase. Blue collar workers are still showing up to make mortars, helicopter replacement parts, Humvees, etc.

Although the corporate path to globalization has already destroyed most of the productive industrial capacity in America, the military related factories remain to churn out a wide variety of complex products in large quantities. These assembly lines (and the advanced machinery and managerial systems experts required by them) will be the last thing the Obama administration touches. That is the reason Obama has focused more on health care to reduce long term costs.

It was always inevitable that mechanization in time will reduce total global amount of human workers and constantly increase levels of total unemployment on an international level. It is against this backdrop that the federal government has to work to decide on what to save money on. Here is a fascinating letter to the president and a call to action from 1960s (highly recommended) by scientists warning of mechanization and its consequences. Some quotes are in order:

"Present excessive levels of unemployment would be multiplied several times if military and space expenditures did not continue to absorb ten per cent of the gross national product (i.e., the total goods and services produced). Some six to eight million people are employed as a direct result of purchases for space and military activities. At least an equal number hold their jobs as an indirect result of military or space expenditures. In recent years, the military and space budgets have absorbed a rising proportion of national production and formed a strong support for the economy."

"The problems posed by the cybernation revolution are part of a new era in the history of all mankind but they are first being faced by the people of the U.S. The way Americans cope with cybernation will influence the course of this phenomenon everywhere. This country is the stage on which the machines-and-man drama will first be played for the world to witness"

"* Surplus capacity and unemployment have thus co-existed at excessive levels over the last six years.

* The underlying cause of excessive unemployment is the fact that the capability of machines is rising more rapidly than the capacity of many human beings to keep pace.

* A permanent impoverished and jobless class is established in the midst of potential abundance."

It has been 40 years since the warnings of this report and 40 years of the government disregarding all recommendations within it (as well as very similar observations and recommendations made by Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1970). Since the government has not made a thrust towards utilizing its industrial base (when it still had it) to move into post-scarcity socioeconomics, what remains to be done is make sure the remaining factories keep running. That means reform of the military-industrial complex rather than massive cuts in it. People working for the defense sector can slowly be put to use nation building right here at home.

It is well understood that the defense sector is bloated and corrupt (Lockheed-Martin for instance makes sure to have offices, factories, and people employed in over 40 states to influence congressmen across the board). However, gutting this 60 year old industrial behemoth will not only increase danger from former soldiers stirring trouble but will also create a bit of a brain drain as defense related scientists go abroad. Considering that the funding for exotic weapons Research and Development has increased under Obama, perhaps the government is aware of this and does not want an American repeat of Soviet scientists selling flowers on a sidewalk for a living until finding work in China.

Most importantly, the same factories making advanced fighter jets, tanks, and communications systems can be retooled to serve national renewal just as car factories were retooled to make tanks during WW2. The recent fires in California for example, could not be brought under control because of inadequate amount of firetrucks (some of them 40 years old) and military-industrial complex facilities can be utilized to stamp out fire trucks and other equipment of tangible material use. Under this cover, the government can continue funding the defense associated industries while actually diverting substantial amounts of money to improving social welfare and quality of life. This would be the equivalent to making cuts in defense that are absolutely necessary while being politically doable (since right now major cuts are impossible in any event due to congressmen needing Lockheed corporate money as well as blue collar political support working on Lockheed owned assets).

The way things stand now once the dollar default occurs, military industrial complex will be rapidly reduced anyway. Since it is a lot more real and tangible than the now deflating financial sector, its demise will bring a lot more societal misery than can be imagined. That is why it must be reformed to be more than an advanced killing machine. A good way to go about it would be to:

1) Increase the number and scope of collaborative projects with European aerospace and military counterparts when it comes to weaponry. This way, the burdens of developing next generation platforms can be shared while keeping American scientists employed within NATO space. Just like Indians and Russians are now jointly working on supersonic BrahMos missiles, there is no reason why Europeans and Americans need to engage on separate jet, ship, helicopter, and missile research.

2) Use executive authority to make surviving car and airplane factories collaborate with cutting edge military production facilities. Since German style state capitalism is coming to United States in the near future anyway, it will not be a big jump from ordering car companies around to mandating collaborative production of 21st century civilian vehicles, planes, communication tools, etc. Even national health care problem can be rapidly solved if the coverage given to soldiers is expanded to provide for all Americans.

3) Declare a national emergency as a pretext (war on dingy infrastructure to beat the Chinese or some silly marketing phrase like that) for using the military assets in socially productive and creative ways. This is an unfortunate tactic but seems to work the best in this society rather than direct appeals to compassion and data. An American government that says "hey lets use our soldiers and our space assets to put up these broadband towers all over the country so everybody has faster Internet than Japanese do" would have much greater success than one that follows recent example of Finnish government by saying  "all people have a right to the fastest Internet possible".

4) Of course who can forget about the 700 military bases US has around the world to maintain dollar dominance as a reserve currency. As the dollar declines, so should the number of American bases overseas.

Not using the military industrial complex as a vital tool of reform with the biggest potential (while first reforming the tool itself and taking enough control of it) would leave the federal government with few other options.

Price of oil explains change of violence in Iraq more than American stabilization efforts ( "The Surge" of troops in Iraq was a fig leaf to cover up surrender to some of insurgent demands )

Surging price of oil up to summer of 2008 gave Iraqi government increasing resources to buy loyalty. Sunni insurgents realized they will lose in a protracted struggle and decided to exchange the weapon of Al Qaeda for American money and protection




It seems that fluctuations in the price of oil (and Iraqi people's reaction to it) is the best determinant whether Iraqi violence falls or rises. The Surge is thus not a success and the situation in Iraq is more precarious than most people realize.

We had it drilled into our heads that correlation is not causation so why does everyone automatically think that a few thousand extra troops did the trick in Iraq? Lets dissect the surge of these 20,000 troops. They were prudently put into more spread out urban checkpoints instead of the previous strategy of being sitting ducks in bases or patrolling ducks in humvees. They also came at a time when ethnic cleansing in Baghdad had made neighborhoods more homogeneous and thus better defended. Troops involved in the surge arrived past the peak oil equivalent of ethnic cleansing when it became increasingly costlier and more energy intensive for Shiites and Sunni kidnappers to get at each other with electric drills. Whereas before nationalist Moqtada Al Sadr could send out squads of people (and use the quantitative advantage of Shiites in Baghdad) to net maybe 50 bodies a day, now more planning and energy was required for same amount of kidnappers to kill say 30-40 a day. Nationalist Sunni insurgent leadership faced a similar problem as they exploited a religious ally of Al-Qaeda to inflict damage on numerically superior neighbors (think of it as Bronx using suicide bombers to stop hordes from Queens from overtaking them). The economics of ethnic cleansing began to work against it and it began to fizzle out just like many American oil wells in the 50s and 60s. Al-Sadr seemed to have gained the upper hand however.

Lets not forget the maze of concrete walls that was finally erected to further defend the repartitioned parts of the capital. Iraqis did rather brazen things but they're still humans and cant walk through walls. Reinforced concrete barriers work as Israelis have been showing for a while. The spirit of Cold War Berlin has finally found rest in a new host. So did adding extra troops to reinforce the police city state modeled on Fallujah end the scourge of ethnic cleansing and insurgency?

They did contribute in speeding up reduction of inter-ethnic violence that was already occurring by providing additional barriers. However, that's like saying that Americans won WW1 by themselves. Bush administration was keen to point to incredible drop in troop deaths in Anbar province but the extra troops in Anbar were not a significant force by any measure. They were even smaller than the tiny amount sent to patrol the capital of over 5 million people. England had 30,000 troops for years to guard against violence from IRA (whose active insurgent numbers were always in a few hundreds) and Russia had dozens of thousands to prevent isolated bands of rebels in Chechnya. The American surge of 20,000, split between a vast province and a populous city, was a laughable concept from the beginning.

But isn't the divide and conquer strategy of paying off former insurgents to not fight the Shiite dominated puppet government part of the bells and whistles that is "The Surge"? Isn't giving a few hundred dollars a month to destitute Sunni rebels (with a promise of more) a part of the Surge strategy to split the Sunni coalition of nationalist/secular fighters and the vicious foreign ideologues? That depends on the definition of the surge one is working with. If having a surge of money, to give to a former enemy so they fight a less negotiable common enemy, is all that was needed, then why send 20 thousand additional exhausted Americans in harms way? Couldn't some troops already there be shuffled around to bring bags of cash to those Arab tribes willing to become traitors and collaborators? Alright perhaps that was harsh. If anything, active co-operation with most of the insurgent leadership was a sign that Americans have lost against the rebellion and were honoring them as partners whose input was taken into account. You don't bargain with the head of a local rebel faction on how much to pay his men if you think you have a chance at killing him and his men or sending them off to prison. Perhaps the insurgent leadership thought it was more patriotic/less collaborationist to humiliate Americans with taking their money in return for not killing American soldiers at a rate of 5 a day. It's unfortunate that when US leadership finally decided to listen to advice of making alliance with former enemies against worse enemies it took nationalist Sunni leadership (rather than British leadership) to get such open ears.

Why would this be less collaborationist for Sunnis strategically speaking? Sure, Al-Qaeda fighters were getting too big for their breeches, terrorizing many Sunnis and imposing religious extremism in some areas that would never be tolerated under Saddam. But the net strategic benefit of them using psychologically weak young men as suicide bombings against Americans, Kurds, Al-Sadr's men, and Maliki's men outweighed the inconvenience of having them around. There was a more troubling development occurring globally that made Sunni insurgents betray their best ally of convenience and thus painfully sacrifice their most effective weapon. The price of oil spiked between 2005 and 2008 to levels not seen in a long time. Maliki's puppet regime began acquiring sufficient funds to pay off not just loyal police/army forces but also funds to start divide and conquering Sunnis without American assistance. Salaries of collaborators and armed men working for Maliki started to increase. 95% of Iraq's economy is oil based. The central government, that was formerly weak and dependent on Americans for protection, began to be able to increasingly not only protect itself but expand its influence. As the price of oil rose to over 140 dollars a barrel, Iraq has accumulated almost 80 billion dollars by the summer of 2008. Of which 30 billion are safely locked up in Manhattan,  

"The Baghdad government has about $30 billion deposited in the Development Fund for Iraq at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York"

Insurgents tried for a time to prevent such funding by continuously sabotaging the oil pipelines. It worked for a time but the price of oil kept rising and it even became profitable to start shipping oil by truck in armed convoys. The bulk of the efforts of the government, as well as the Americans, was focused to ensure protection of the export. Maliki, being an incredibly good strategist realized short term considerations, such as the quelling the rebellion and provision of social services, could wait and would be solved eventually through acquisition of sufficient funds. The rush to export as much as possible led to not only increase in corruption (resulting in occasional ludicrous events) but also brutalization and reduction in quality of loyalist forces.

Although many insurgents made money off the oil themselves to fund their operations, the government continued to make disproportionately more and gain a foothold in the minds of its numerically superior voting blocks. Central government could now stop pretending to be a puppet and start exerting itself to push Americans out so it could wipe out Baathist remnants. The current ruling Dawa party in Iraq started off as a terrorist organization and actively supported Iran during Iraq's war with it. The party that was for years protected by Americans actively and continuously betrayed Iraq nation state even as hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died and were maimed on the battlefield in the 80s. It was for years funded by Iran and is still indirectly helped by it. Such an impudent and now domestic power with the backing of many educated Shiites and friendliness to Iran was a far graver long term threat to Sunni nationalists than the 20 year old Americans occasionally venturing from their bases.

For the Bush administration, negotiating with insurgents who until the moment of negotiating were branded as mostly terrorists was a humiliating politically dangerous act that needed a good pitch to the American people. Admission of defeat against the rebels was marketed and sold as a change in American tactics and ordinary Iraqis rising up and throwing off the yoke of al-Qaeda. 20,000 extra troops were a fig leaf for this turning point in relations with the rebellion. Sunni insurgents bargained away their best weapon but gained more power, temporary peace, and better public relations by exterminating large quantities of foreign fighters.

Continuing to fight American forces (even with al-Qaeda's help) would keep weakening Sunni nationalists and allow Maliki to further consolidate, grow, and win. That was deemed unacceptable by insurgent leadership and they created a temporary alliance with the Americans to not only re-organize and humiliate Americans but also to make Maliki seem weaker and less popular in the minds of his supporters. Maliki appeared to be cutting a deal with Sunni militias through tacit consent of American plan and thus inability to shake off the image of a puppet.

Maliki successfully countered his pubic relations reversal by invading and occupying Sadr city. Why wasn't Muqtada al-Sadr able to prevent government's invasion of his home turf and the key Baghdad neighborhood of his power base? Before, when the price of oil was lower and the government less consolidated, Sadr effectively provided for some welfare and social needs of his supporters by creating a de-facto area of governance. He competed with Maliki's political faction by showing that he is 1) more nationalistic and determined to expel the Americans by having actually fought them twice 2) better able to protect Shiites from Sunni/al-Qaeda attacks and 3) more focused on improving quality of life for areas under his control. Times have changed and Maliki had more money to play around and offer to supporters so Sadr bowed to pressure to re-organize. Fighting Maliki was not an option at the time.

What does this mean in terms of the surge? It means that the possibility is there that the surge in the price of oil has done a lot more for Iraq's seeming drop in violence than extra 20,000 Americans. Now that the price of oil has fallen dramatically and might remain so indefinitely as the recession continues, Maliki is burning through his reserves (that he saved for a rainy day) at an incredible rate. Obama seems to realize how dangerous Iraq is to being destabilized again and that explains the slowness of the troop withdrawal. Sunni insurgents increasingly see American soldiers as good allies for protecting them during this period and are waiting for the oil based economy to come crashing down so they can exploit a weakness in Maliki's coalition. Recent increase in bombings and violence seems to indicate that just 6 months of low oil prices are already destabilizing the situation somewhat. It is not known how fast the billions of dollars to pay off loyalists will be spent. It's possible that Obama will try to use sudden reversal in Maliki's strength to force through major agreements between Sunnis and Shiites. Such an agreement was more difficult before without the drastic act of retaking Baghdad with American/formerly Baathist forces. Keeping a lid on the civil war from resuming earlier than Obama's re-election is key if Obama is to implement his long term agenda over 8 years and to choose his successor.