Dispatches from Deena Stryker
US Versus Russian Defense Industries
The reasons commonly invoked for the new cold war between the US and Russia center on Russian ‘behavior’ on the international stage: a ‘revanchist’ former empire, it ‘threatens’ the Baltics, ‘invaded’ Ukraine and ‘took over’ Crimea, mocking the US-designed ‘international order’. Knowledgable observers have rebutted each of these claims, while overlooking an important explanation for US belligerence, starting with the massing of NATO troops and arms on Russia’s border: the American arms industry is in private hands, while in a well thought out holdover from Soviet days, the Russian arms industry continues to be government owned, its Military Industrial Commission supervising the implementation of State Defense Orders.
In 2005, President Putin began to consolidate the industry, bringing the biggest aircraft companies under a single umbrella organization, the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC), a Russian open joint stock company. Among Russia’s other major arms companies are:
Almaz Antey, a state-owned company that producesair defense systems, firearms for aircraft and armored vehicles, artillery shells and surface-to-surface missiles, airspace surveillance and coordination, and artillery radars. Its 2013 turnover was $8.33 billion.
– Uralvagonzavod (UVZ) is a Public Limited Company and the largest tank manufacturer in the world.
The names of America’s ‘great’ arms manufacturers are as familiar as those of its soda companies or television channels: Boeing, Northrup Grumman, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, etc. Quoted on the NY stock exchange, they generate massive wealth for individual investors. And with wars invariably followed by massive reconstruction, analysts pay scant attention to the profits generated by a destroy-to-rebuild system that has been in place for decades. Although the price tags of ever-new weapons are quoted every year at budget time, the profits they generate are never linked to foreign policy decisions. Currently the probability of the US going to war against Russia or China is couched strictly in terms of their international behavior, as though no other factors entered into those decisions.
That is why this article is not about defense industries per se, but about the fundamental differences in foreign policy choices that flow from ownership of the means of war, and the worldview they reflect. It is an oxymoron that constant warfare benefits ‘the arms industries’ — mentioned as if its activities were on a moral par with other human endeavors. Very differently, harking back to the nineteenth century utopian movement, one of socialism’s basic principles has always been the pursuit of peace. Socialists around the world campaigned unsuccessfully against the First World War, trying to educate the cannon fodder on both sides to the fact that they had more in common with each other than with their respective bosses. While some claim that democracies do not make war against each other, history shows that when liberal governments are in charge, war is never a distant horizon.
Thanks to the socialist ethos with which Vladimir Putin grew up, Russia’s policies vis a vis the arms industry, together with social protections, were saved from the Soviet Union’s bathwater — the rampant privatization of almost everything under Boris Yeltsin. In every statement and speech about foreign affairs, the Russian president calls for cooperation rather than confrontation, not opportunistically, but as part of a fundamental worldview. And it is likely it is precisely this constant message that ensures he is never quoted by the US media. Americans have no clue that the country designated as their latest enemy espouses principles that most of them would subscribe to were they given a choice, not to mention impartial information about such.
When making war benefits the billionaires concentrated in the 0.00001%, it is more likely to be popular among the politicians who serve them than a policy of cooperation with other states. Very differently, when a state with a long history of socialist thought controls the production of weapons, war is seen as a tragedy that should only occur when all efforts at conciliation have failed, not to mention awareness that its costs leave fewer resources for social services. The individuals who profit from war believe counter-intuitively that they will somehow be spared its ravages, while citizens of countries whose governments control arms production know they are all in the same boat.
In Russia, although twenty-two individual firms are permitted to independently export spare parts and components, all arms exports must be processed through the sole state intermediary agency for the export/import of defense-related and dual use products, technologies and services. Set up in 2000 by presidential decree, Rosoboronexport is charged with implementing the country’s policies on military-technical cooperation between Russia and foreign countries. In 2007, it was re-registered as an open joint stock company (OJSC), and since then, the government-controlled consortium has had a legal monopoly on Russian arms exports.
In 2010, total Russian arms exports amounted to $10 billion, of which Rosoboronexport’s share was $8.6 billion, independent suppliers making up the difference. In 2011, Rostekhnologii, a non-profit state corporation acquired Rosoboronexport, suggesting that there is some competition, however under Russia’s ‘non-democratic’ political system, arms manufacturers do not write legislation — or direct foreign policy.
Note: In 2012, Rosoboronexport was widely reported to be Syria’s main arms supplier, but Russia maintains that the relationship is based on longstanding contracts. Furthermore, weapons sold to Syria — primarily air defense installations— are purely defensive and cannot be used against civilians. The refurbishment of Russian-made helicopters, and the delivery of S-300 anti-aircraft missiles were condemned by the US, Germany and Israel, notwithstanding the freedom of US arms manufacturers to sell their wares to the highest bidders, whatever US foreign policy may be.
Attitudes Toward Health and Defense
Once the colonies achieved independence from Great Britain, after an eight-year war, Americans saw no battles on their home turf until the Civil War, “four-score and seven” years later. A century and a half after that bloody conflict ended, southerners whose ancestors had fought to succeed over the possession of slaves still evoked that violence.
Yet Americans fail to recognize the Russian experience of aggression, allowing their government to uninterruptedly condemn it for a century, first because it adopted Communism, then because it refused to bow to American supremacy. Russia has been invaded many times – by the Golden Horde of Ghengis Khan from the East, by the Teutonic Knights, the Swedes, the Poles, the French (Napoleon) and the Germans — twice in one century — from the West. And just as America’s southerners have yet to ‘forget’ their four-year-long civil war, Russians will probably never cease to ‘remember’ the Nazi invasion which they repulsed in The Great Patriotic War.
Since the Revolution of 1917, Russians have built ‘fraternal’ ties to the Golden Hordes’ Mongolian descendants as well as to the Chinese, and the Islamic “Stans” that rim their southern border, bringing education, health care and artistic development, as well as technology. Because of its decisive role in the defeat of Nazi Germany, the West granted the Soviet incarnation of Russia oversight of the poorly developed lands lying between it and Germany, that had allied themselves with Hitler under right-wing regimes, enabling another invasion. At the end of World War II, their liberation by the Red Army made way for Communist power which, as in Central Asia, brought education, health care and development.
Americans fail to recognize the Russian experience of aggression, allowing their government to uninterruptedly condemn it for a century, first because it adopted Communism, then because it refused to bow to American supremacy. Russia has been invaded many times – by the Golden Horde of Ghengis Khan from the East, by the Teutonic Knights, the Swedes, the Poles, the French (Napoleon) and the Germans — twice in one century — from the West. And just as America’s southerners have yet to ‘forget’ their four-year-long civil war, Russians will probably never cease to ‘remember’ the Nazi invasion which they repulsed in The Great Patriotic War. Twenty-seven million Soviet citizens perished in that war, as if the whole population of California, Texas and New York combined had been wiped out in one single conflict. How many Americans know this monumental fact, let alone comprehend its emotional impact?
From 1917 to 1991, the Soviet Union and its communist ‘satellites’ were considered enemies by the United States, whose way of life centered not around solidarity but around competition. Humans were not ‘entitled’ to food, shelter, education and medical care, as socialists claim; they had to achieve these ‘benefits’ by the sweat of their brow. The government’s job was to defend from invaders and facilitate the ‘pursuit of happiness’, defined as ever more money and the things it could buy. The language used to sell President Trump’s new healthcare legislation to Congress reveals that enduring mindset: the broad choice of plans are ‘tailored’ to the needs of individuals, the way automobile manufacturers design sedans, roadsters, station wagons, to meet the ‘preferences’ of different customers.
After more than two centuries of runaway materialism, the idea that people could accept — and even choose to live by — a different ethos is still anathema to Americans. It is not the responsibility of government to ensure the mutual aid that in earlier times was provided by family, neighbors and church, when these institutions became fragile. The Puritans claimed that the church must be separate from government — in the early colonies, clergymen were in charge — and subsequently that government should not meddle in people’s individual lives. Conservatism 101 established that conscience, which sets humans above animals, and separates one individual from all others, is God’s greatest gift, making each of us ‘entitled’ to ‘choice’ in all matters concerning our private lives, ’free’ from government interference, government having no ‘right’ to tell us how to live.
While it can require individuals to purchase automobile insurance in order to protect other drivers and their possessions, the same is not true for medical insurance, because health is a purely individual matter. On the basis of this dogma, the conservatives who founded the country drove it forward to ever bigger and better things, ‘free’ to tell us which of their businesses to patronize and which of their products to purchase in the name of our ‘freedom of choice’. Ultimately they made the United States the only developed nation that does not recognize health as a right, but as just another ‘thing’ that those who can afford it have.
House Speaker Paul Ryan justifies the elimination of Obama’s ‘mandate’ or ‘obligation’ to buy health care, as reinstating individual ‘freedom’ to purchase insurance or not — as if individuals had perfect control over their life or death needs for medical care. The purpose of the mandate was to ensure that the premiums of a large enough pool of ‘healthy’ people — those requiring few medical services — would make up for the children and elderly who account for the largest share of medical expenses and may not have the means to pay for them. What is wrong with this approach, according to Ryan, is that the government has no ‘right’ to force — or mandate — people to purchase health insurance. They must be able to ‘choose’ whether to undertake this expense or not, solidarity be damned. Incidentally, this should not be read as an endorsement of Obamacare, a hopelessly complex and flawed plan designed by Republicans and literally dictated by the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, this approach would result in 14 million more Americans without health care in 2026 than under Obamacare, while enabling more ‘defense’ spending and granting sizable tax breaks to the highest ‘earners’. MSNBC’s market analyst Ali Velshi recently dared to remark sotto voce that market-based systems have not worked anywhere, implicitly condemning Democrats’ failure under Clinton and Obama to fight for single payer health care, which by eliminating private insurance profits, would insure all for less cost. The Trump administration claims that individuals would not be able to afford the higher premiums — when in reality, in single-payer countries individual contributions toward health care are a fraction of the US’s market-driven costs, and are matter-of-factly deducted from salaries, along with income tax. Not to mention that in almost all nations except the US the cost of drugs is negotiated by the government at substantive volume discounts, something forbidden under American law (Obama and the Democrats refused to bargain for that under Obamacare), at the behest of Big Pharma’s lobbyists.
The administration may have committed a fatal error by allowing the new head of the Office of Management and Budget to reveal that once health care is ‘reformed’ the government’s plan is to eliminate other programs that benefit low income Americans. His hard-nosed justification for eliminating school lunches is that there is no ‘demonstrable evidence’ that they increases academic performance. Only a lingering shred of decency—and a remnant of fear of public opinion— prevents him from wheeling meals for the elderly out of sight. But such behavior is par for the course in US politics.
DEENA STRYKER, Senior Contributing Editor
Born in Philadelphia, Stryker spent most of her adolescent and adult years in Europe, resulting over time in several unique books, her latest being
CUBA: Diary of a Revolution, Inside the Cuban Revolution with Fidel, Raul, Che, and Celia Sanchez
America Revealed to a Honey-Colored World
A Taoist Politics: The Case For Sacredness
She began her journalistic career at the French News Agency in Rome, spent two years in Cuba finding out whether the Barbados were Communists before they made the revolution (‘Cuba 1964: When the Revolution was Young’). After spending half a decade in Eastern Europe, and a decade in the U.S., studying Global Survival and writing speeches in the Carter State Department, she wrote the only book that foresaw the fall of the Berlin Wall AND the dissolution of the Soviet Union (“Une autre Europe, un autre Monde’). Her memoir, ‘Lunch with Fellini, Dinner with Fidel’, tells it all. ‘A Taoist Politics: The Case for Sacredness’, which examines the similarities between ancient wisdom and modern science and what this implies for political activism; and ‘America Revealed to a Honey-Colored World” is a pamphlet about how the U.S. came down from the City on a Hill’.
MAIN IMAGE: Advanced Russian bomber, Tupolev Tu-160
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Very good. Except for this: “Conservatism 101 established that conscience, which sets humans above animals, and separates one individual from all others, is God’s greatest gift, making each of us ‘entitled’ to ‘choice’ in all matters concerning our private lives, ’free’ from government interference, government having no ‘right’ to tell us how to live.” What does “God” (whatever s/he is) have to with this (or anything else)? A serial murderer’s conscience is not my conscience, and if the murderer’s conscience is a gift from “God”, then such a god is not worth anything and should be denounced as a mass… Read more »