Below are some links and articles I sent to The Nation regarding "The Contractor Hypothesis"
...shouldn't we begin to ask the question, a la Thomas Ferguson, Mancur Olson and other theorists of the relations between rent seeking and campaign finance among military contractors, whether the Clinton Doctrine is not in the best interests of the Democratic Party--a multimillion $$ a year corporation. The following links should give an indication of who is really working for the buildup of NATO.
1st, a quick comment from the Center For Responsive Politics:
With tight domestic budgets, contractors want to make sure they have more foreign customers for their weapon systems. That goal was a factor in the industry’s lobbying for expansion of NATO membership to include Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic. As a condition of joining NATO, the new members are obliged to upgrade their weapons systems to western standards. The Senate finally ratified the NATO treaty in April 1998.
Scare the bejeesiz out of neighbors of economically depressed -hence politically volatile states and they'll come asking for protection. Then have them sign treaties whereby they get loans to pay for MIC goods with our TAX$$.
http://www.govexec.com/top200/topdod.htm
http://www.comw.org/qdr/cspinney.htm
http://www.thecarlylegroup.com/managers.htm#Carlucci
http://www.fas.org/asmp/index.html
http://www.webcom.com/ncecd/bp18.html
http://web.deskbook.osd.mil/reflib/DDOD/001EN/001ENDOC.htm
In short, if foreign sales have fallen off, does it not make sense from a policy cartel POV to lobby for more sales by sponsoring events which pronounce an increasing pessimism with regards to instability in fledgeling democracies or struggling post-authoritarian states? Pessimism can easily become a self-fulfilling world view--the opposite of Keynes theory of optimism.
The below is from, of all places, the Von Mises Institute;
Ron Brown's Corporate Welfare Scam Tom DiLorenzo
The death of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown in a Balkans plane crash exposed the real reason President Clinton sent American troops to Bosnia: to make the world safe for corporate welfare.
An aspect of the so-called Dayton Peace Accords, which led to the deployment of U.S. troops, was an initial installment of $600 million in U.S. foreign aid, much of it for construction contracts.
As was the case in Vietnam, Kuwait, Panama, Somalia, Haiti, and now Bosnia, America's corporate elite are shamelessly bilking the taxpayers and putting American lives at risk, all under the guise of patriotism and "nation building."
What Mr. Brown and his party of traveling CEOs were doing in the Balkans when their plane crashed was assuring that select American businesses, i.e. major contributors to the Democratic Party, received the bulk of the foreign aid funds through construction contracts.
"Many companies represented on Mr. Brown's missions were Democratic donors," the Wall Street Journal reports. "The opportunities for contracts are quite considerable," a spokesman for Riggs Bank told the Washington Post. Such opportunities even included "the import of 5,000 pregnant heifers."
Promoting war and military interventionism is very profitable for America's political and business elite, which is probably why the Bosnian intervention had bipartisan support in Congress. According to a March 23, 1996, AP story, the company headed by former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney--Brown and Root--is expected to make $500 million for construction work to serve the "expanding needs of U.S. troops in Bosnia."
The General Accounting Office recently blamed Cheney's firm for being "the primary source of $327 million in budget overruns for the Bosnia operation." Brown and Root has made $260 million for barracks construction in Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti, and Italy--on top of the $500 million it will rake in from Bosnia.
In short, war profiteering is why high-ranking executives from such corporations as Bechtel, the Barrington Group, Guardian Industries, Riggs, AT&T, Ensearch International, Air and Water Technologies, Harza Engineering, Bridge Housing Corp., and Foster Wheeler Energy International accompanied Ron Brown to Bosnia.
There are big bucks to be made in the "war reconstruction" and "nation building" industry. Such riches, however, create a perverse incentive for these firms to lobby for even more military adventurism. The stupid notion of "nation building" in places like Haiti, Somalia, and Bosnia is simply a smokescreen for the dispensing of corporate welfare to politically connected businesses. The same can be said of the misnamed "Mexican bailout," which was really a bailout of Goldman Sachs and other American holders of Mexico's bad debt.
Worse yet, social engineers at the World Bank, the Clinton administration, and in Congress see the destruction of former Yugoslavia as a brand-new opportunity for international social engineering schemes and pork-barrel politics. The World Bank promises an initial $5 billion in "reconstruction efforts." Since U.S. taxpayers supply a large part of the World Bank's budget, this means they are on the hook for additional untold millions.
But foreign aid has been an unmitigated disaster for a very fundamental reason, as explained by Peter Bauer in The Development Frontier. Foreign aid does not go directly to a country's population, but to its government. That "increases its resources, patronage, and power in relation to the rest of society." Life becomes more politicized and government increases its control over its subjects. People "divert attention, energy, and resources from productive economic activities to concern with the outcome of political and administrative processes and decisions."
Foreign aid tends to destroy free enterprise in recipient countries. It has a history of leading to the persecution or expulsion of: productive entrepreneurs who oppose the bureaucratization of their economy; restrictions on the inflow of foreign capital and businesses; forced collectivization, sometimes as a prerequisite for aid; price controls; protectionism; state-owned enterprises; and massive government regulation in general. Even though they are economically disastrous, writes Bauer, such policies are pursued by foreign aid recipients "because they accord with the purposes and interests of the ruling group, including promotion of government power."
Forty years of foreign aid to the third world--including $300 billion from the World Bank alone since the 1950s--has inflicted incalculable economic harm. Latin America's foreign debt exceeds $400 billion; per capita incomes in sub-Saharan Africa are lower today than they were twenty-five years ago; and most foreign aid recipients have experienced no economic growth at all for years.
Even the New York Times, normally a supporter of the international welfare state, concluded recently that "three decades of foreign development assistance in the third world has failed to lift the poorest of the poor in Africa and Asia much beyond where they have always been." It has only "fattened political elites" as the donor countries have used the money to subsidize well-connected corporations and private groups like the Red Cross.
Former Yugoslavia, and the rest of Eastern Europe, will only be economically revived if they jettison their socialist politicians and policies and rapidly cultivate a regime of private property and free enterprise. The worst of all possible economic worlds is the one that is beginning to take shape there, however: an economy strictly controlled by domestic government regulators along with bureaucrats from the World Bank, IMF, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
None of this seems to matter to the American supporters of foreign aid to Bosnia. What matters to them is that it is yet another excuse to gain wealth and political power for themselves through a corrupt system of international corporate welfare.
This next one is an old Philadelphia Inquirer piece...
Defense Contractors Woo Old Foes
Back to -NEWS-
Friday, July 18, 1997 By Michael D. Towle
INQUIRER WASHINGTON BUREAU
U.S. firms see a potential payoff in the billions in central Europe. Defense officials there are looking to upgrade their air fleets. There is a critical drawback.
WASHINGTON -- For two decades, workers at Lockheed Martin's plant in Fort Worth, Texas, built F-16 Falcon fighters that could shoot down MiGs deployed by the Soviet Union and its allies in central Europe.
But last week Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic were invited to become NATO allies. Now, Lockheed Martin is scrambling to sell the same F-16s to old enemies in central Europe. The potential payoff -- billions of dollars in fighter sales. Lockheed has signed cooperative agreements with industry in the region, opened offices to communicate with officials in government and business, and sent its chairman, Norman Augustine, on a tour of Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania and Slovenia to advance the company's name and image. And Lockheed is not alone. McDonnell Douglas, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Bell Helicopter, and other major players in the U.S. defense industry are involved in a sales blitz in central Europe.
``Everybody is everywhere over there,'' said Jeff Pino, Bell Helicopter's executive director of marketing for Europe. Industry experts say nearly every country in the region needs to update its aging fleets of fighters and helicopters. Their current aircraft lack the sophisticated avionics and radar equipment that make Western aircraft far more lethal.
Central Europe is expected to take years to develop as its countries overcome financial and other challenges. But the potential of the region has renewed the spirits of an industry that has witnessed a sharp decline in the Pentagon's budget and its need for military wares.
``We look at eastern and central Europe as a good market in the near-term and as a really good market long-term,'' Pino said. ``They want U.S. military standard equipment because that's what they had been trained to go against and they know how formidable it is.''
In May, Bell signed a $40 million agreement to sell Romania a version of its AH-1W Marine Corps attack helicopter. Bell will produce the 96 choppers in Romania in a joint venture with IAM Brasov, a helicopter-maker there.
Industry experts say central Europe is a good prospective market because of pent-up demand.
``For 50 years, this has been the only region of the world that has been denied Western military products, and so you are starting at ground zero,'' said Joel Johnson, vice president for international affairs at the Aerospace Industries Association.
``It's an open playing field for the Europeans and U.S. and is the widest-open competition the industry has seen in a long time.''Hungary and the Czech Republic are shopping for 30 to 40 new fighters each and may spend as much as $1 billion to acquire them. Poland is looking for a like number of fighters but is said to be considering a future buy of an additional 100 to 150 fighters, a buying spree that could be worth $5 billion.
The F-16 is in the middle of every competition, but so are the McDonnell Douglas F-18, the French-made Mirage 2000-5, and the Swedish JAS 39 Gripen.
The Russian MiG 29 is also in the running but is considered a dark horse because of its history of reliability problems and a supply line that is considered less than dependable.
Experts say the manufacturer that wins the business will need to be not only technically superior but also flexible enough to do business in a region that is financially strapped.
U.S. defense industry officials are counting on another major factor to help them sell to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic -- the importance the three countries place on integrating their air forces with those of NATO allies.
In the industry, it's called ``interoperability,'' a fancy word for friendly countries using the same military weapons. The practice is said to ease everything from communications to mission planning to supply-line issues.
The F-16 already has seen the benefit of that effort. To date, NATO members have purchased 900 Falcons, giving the plane the moniker of ``NATO Standard Fighter.''
``If you want to be a strong NATO ally, flying the NATO standard fighter makes a lot of sense,'' said Doug Miller, Lockheed's program director for Hungary. There is one critical drawback to developing the central European markets: While their desires for new weapons are great, their financial resources are limited.
Defense officials in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic have said their defense budgets likely will increase 20 to 30 percent once admitted to NATO, and all want to buy new aircraft. But none has clear government approval to purchase new fighters, and it's unclear how many they will be able to afford.
The Pentagon has a plan to help the incoming NATO nations gain access to American products even without funding. The Air Force and the Navy have offered leases on F-16s and F-18s at a low cost or free.
William Zimmerman, Lockheed's program director for the Czech Republic, said leasing would allow each nation to fill a need it has now, while it worked on obtaining the funding for new aircraft later.
``It would be a transitional approach toward modernization,'' he said.
The Pentagon appears to believe that each nation could get by with a smaller number of Western fighters than it is preparing to buy. A recent study recommended that each acquire 10 to 15 refurbished fighters.
But opponents of selling arms in the region say the Pentagon is helping contractors pander.
``We should be working with these countries on developing their economies, not pushing advanced weaponry on them,'' said Natalie Goldring, deputy director of the British American Security Information Council. ``Our manufacturers are playing exactly the same role that drug dealers play when they offer someone a free sample of a drug to try and get them hooked.''
Goldring questions why there needs to be a buildup of Western arms in the region at all.
``If the threat isn't Russia, then what is it?'' she asked. ``If you don't have a threat, why have a military alliance? Why talk about expanding that alliance at great cost?''
Philadelphia Online -- The Philadelphia Inquirer, International -- Copyright
You can find out more by hitting http://www.crp.org or http://cdi.org
Incidentally, The Brookings Institute is holding a closed session on NATO in Kosovo tomorrow at 9am in DC; wanna take a guess at how many military contractor lobbyists will be there??
Cheers,
Ian Murray SEattle, WA