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).

Afghanistan Election: Does Obama Want a New Puppet?

Hamid Karzai finds himself under the same scrutiny usually reserved for allies of China and Russia. Afghanistan as an American protectorate may soon see change in management as has historically occurred when puppets didn't perform



In the eyes of the new reform minded regime in the White House, the Indian educated CIA man Hamid Karzai may have outlived his usefulness. Even as Karzai's vote total is inching closer to 50%+ needed to avoid a runoff, he finds himself in the same situation as Babrak Karmal in 1986. That means that just like the Soviet backed mayor of Kabul in the 80s, the new American backed mayor of Kabul has grown too comfortable in his expectation that a foreign force will prop his rule indefinitely. Sure, he tries to be a political middleman between various factions by not sticking his head out too much in siding with any one of them. That tactic of survival through doing nothing has historically worked only for a time. Eventually, somebody gets frustrated.

In this case it appears to be the American generals who saw soldier casualties rise every year since 2001 invasion. NATO's very existence is at stake in a mission that was supposed to give the obsolete alliance some relevancy. The rising casualties and disgruntled protests from alliance countries make the issue more urgent for the preservation of American power in Western Europe. Their recent insistence that the Afghan army get expanded and start pulling its weight is analogous to Soviet command's desire to expand Afghan army in mid 1980s after 6 years of escalating casualties among occupying troops.

What does it mean for a puppet army to do more work? It means creating conditions where the occupying power can delegate killing to others. In Soviet Union's case, it was pressured replacement of Babrak Karmal with Mohammad Najibullah. Najibullah has shown himself to be energetic, efficient, and very willing to crack skulls and use Afghans against other Afghans. Besides being a more aggressive and more capable puppet, he also had potential to gain more legitimacy among Afghanistan's population by also being very supportive of extended modernization efforts to raise quality of life.

Abdullah Abdullah, Karzai's snappy "Western leaning" (usual catchphrase to refer to actual and potential American puppets as shown by the colored revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia) reformer challenger fits the role of a replacement puppet perfectly. For an occupied country (where corruption and election censorship is a lot worse than Iran), Abdullah has been getting unusually large amounts of American media coverage before and during election process. United States media does not usually focus on challengers taking on corrupt incumbents trying to influence election results in their favor unless these incumbents have become obstacles for American geopolitical strategy. US and its intelligence organs and NATO allies have been creating public relations victories and force multiplier effects for pro-Washington friendlies for decades. They recently had great success by dislodging Yanukovich, Shevardnadze, and Milosevich (with a possible attempt against Ahmadinejad in Iran this summer) by promoting "pro-Western" opposition to power through rapid creation of negative international media perception (character assassinating incumbents as corrupt and needing to go for the good of all). Even the Northern Alliance side in the 1996-2001 civil war was elevated to be a knight in shining armor with relatively great success.

Karzai has recently found himself under the same public relations attack that is usually reserved for allies of Russia or China. He has:

1) been warned by a US envoy to prepare for a recount. Although he is supposedly 2% away from reaching 50% to clinch the nomination, this week saw nullification of entire ballot districts, a process that can be modified to create whatever result is needed.

2) been object of major negative attention from key national propaganda papers like New York Times and Washington Post (that have some influence on wealthy American citizens).

3) has not been supplied with enough weaponry for more independent functioning in last 2 years even after personal requests. He subsequently threatened to acquire weaponry from "the other place" (presumably a non-NATO regional power)

Karzai and his family also have relatively strong ties to the previous regime in DC as their connections to Bush family and CIA go back 20 years. As India and Pakistan intelligence services begin to position themselves to end their conflict over who will have influence in Afghanistan, United States may very well decide to back Abdullah Abdullah as new puppet (his base of political support is in northern non-Pashtun Afghanistan). As we saw in the second phase of the Afghan civil war in the late 1990s, non-Pashtun northeners will have no problem slaughtering Pashtun Taliban even without an international Western force in the country. The spectacle of the Afghan election and the low turn out has shown that even the illusion of a democratic mask on a puppet regime is unworkable. Insurgency continues regardless of whether the leader is Pashtun and whether the leader is willing to not exert himself too much.

It is thus logical for an occupying force to leave a smaller ethnic group (or in Afghan case, an alliance of ethnic groups) that resorts to a lot more forceful and independent pacification methods to remain in power after the imperial withdrawal. It has been done like that throughout history. Getting members of a new leadership from the former Northern Alliance region is also more acceptable to European Union (whose members have more responsibility, connections, and personal hearts and minds contact there) and Russia (which wants a friendly Tajik/Uzbek buffer between Central Asia and fundamentalist Islam in southern Afghanistan. They already had spillover from Afghanistan once during the civil war in Tajikistan).

This week brought the additional criticism of the current occupational arrangement from Western European NATO members after the fuel tanker bombardment. Although the German command ordered the bombing, the Anglo-American tactics of long distant bombardment is what's criticized here. Clearly Europeans want to accelerate the process of passing their duties to their connections in northern half of the country (who will then have a more intimate violent contact in pacifying the south while aided by generous donations of cash and weapons). Even Russia jumped on the bandwagon this week by asking to help NATO plan the process that it has so much experience with.

Dealing with Karzai will not be a matter of creating another orange revolution since he has managed to make a lot of connections in central and southern parts of the country (even if he has no control over them). He can't be simply assassinated either was the South Vietnamese puppet in the old days. It remains to be seen whether Obama administration can be creatively proactive in restructuring the regime of this American protectorate by itself (and thus show leadership and get respect to preserve its status as first among equals in NATO) or if it will defer to designs of other NATO members.