FALSE PROFITS: The U.S. Military’s War Over Russia

21st Century Wire says…

We’ve said it many times during the last two years here at 21WIRE and on the SUNDAY WIRE radio show – that the present anti-Russia hysteria being rolled out in the US and Britain is simply a cheap facade to gin up a new arms race.  Not small ticket items, but big ticket items – including the next generation of ‘next generation’ tactical nuclear weapons. 

The only problem is: the out-of-control rhetoric, mixed with Washington’s careless and belligerent military posturing – might inadvertently lead to belligerent military action.

Watch US Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley last week, threatening to “destroy any enemy, anytime,” meaning Russia.

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General Milley performed his duty for the corporations. All smiles at the AGM. Indeed, business has never been better.

“Bravo, encore!” says Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, General Dynamics, BAE Systems, Airbus and General Electric.

When will it end? How much profit is enough for the US ‘defense’ industry?

The sad truth: it’s never enough…

Mark Perry
Politico

During the Battle of the Wilderness in 1864, a unit of Robert E. Lee’s army rolled up some artillery pieces and began shelling the headquarters of Union commander Ulysses S. Grant. When one of his officers pleaded that Grant move, insisting that he knew exactly what Lee was going to do, Grant, normally a taciturn man, lost his temper: “Oh, I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do,” he said. “Some of you always seem to think he is going to turn a double somersault, and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time. Go back to your command and try to think what we are going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do.”

The story was recalled to me a few weeks ago by a senior Pentagon officer in citing the April 5 testimony of Army leaders before a Senate Armed Services Subcommittee. The panel delivered a grim warning about the future of the U.S. armed forces: Unless the Army budget was increased, allowing both for more men and more materiel, members of the panel said, the United States was in danger of being “outranged and outgunned” in the next war and, in particular, in a confrontation with Russia. Vladimir Putin’s military, the panel averred, had outstripped the U.S. in modern weapons capabilities. And the Army’s shrinking size meant that “the Army of the future will be too small to secure the nation.” It was a sobering assessment delivered by four of the most respected officers in the Army—including Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, his service’s leading intellectual. The claim is the prevailing view among senior Army officers, who fear that Army readiness and modernization programs are being weakened by successive cuts to the U.S. defense budget.

But not everyone was buying it.

“This is the ‘Chicken-Little, sky-is-falling’ set in the Army,” the senior Pentagon officer said.

“These guys want us to believe the Russians are 10 feet tall. There’s a simpler explanation: The Army is looking for a purpose, and a bigger chunk of the budget. And the best way to get that is to paint the Russians as being able to land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time. What a crock.”

(…) The fight over the Army panel’s testimony is the latest example of a deepening feud in the military community over how to respond to shrinking budget numbers. At issue is the military’s strategic future: Facing cuts, will the Army opt to modernize its weapons’ arsenal, or defer modernization in favor of increased numbers of soldiers? On April 5, the Army’s top brass made its choice clear: It wants to do both, and Russia’s the reason. But a growing chorus of military voices says that demand is both backward and dangerously close-minded—that those same senior military officers have not only failed to understand the lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq and embrace service reform, they are inflating foreign threats to win a bigger slice of the defense budget…

Continue this story at Politico.com

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