One-Stop Shopping

The World Policy Institute's Frida Berrigan points out something that has long bothered me: The US's pimping of high-tech weaponry around the world:

HERE'S THE strange thing, though: This genuine, gold-medal manufacturing-and-sales job on weapons simply never gets the attention it deserves. As a result, most Americans have no idea how proud they should be of our weapons manufacturers and the Pentagon — essentially our global sales force. They make sure our weapons travel the planet and regularly demonstrate their value in small wars from Latin America to Central Asia.

[...]

After all, what does a drug dealer do? He creates a need and then fills it. He encourages an appetite or (even more lucratively) an addiction and then feeds it.

Arms dealers do the same thing. They suggest to foreign officials that their military just might need a slight upgrade. After all, they'll point out, haven't you noticed that your neighbor just upgraded in jets, submarines and tanks? And didn't you guys fight a war a few years back? Doesn't that make you feel insecure? And why feel insecure for another moment when, for just a few billion bucks, we'll get you suited up with the latest model military, even better than what we sold them — or you the last time around.

Why do officials in Turkey, which already has 215 fighter planes, need 100 extras in an even higher-tech version? They don't, but Lockheed Martin, working with the Pentagon, made them think they did.

Berrigan, however, leaves out an important point: Once these weapons become ubiquitous it provides an argument for designing and building (at staggering cost) even higher-tech weapons. Just to reestablish military superiority, y'know. Then, of course, we'll sell those to everyone else and the cycle begins anew.

It's a lovely racket for a few.

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