The US Military-Industrial Complex and the Looming War on Iran
by Edberto M. Villegas, PhD,
Former head, Development Studies Program,
University of the Philippines, Manila
The US military-industrial complex(MIC) is once again leading the Middle East to the brink of war, which may place the whole world at risk of a nuclear conflagration. The Trump government, supported by the MIC or US monopoly capitalism(composed of the leading MNCs in the US ) is pushing Iran to a corner, where the latter faced with the prospects of total economic devastations, may be forced to fight back. It the US attacks Iran, using Iran's aggressive defense as an excuse for war(Iran shot down last June 21, 2019 a US drone hovering over its territory), the Shiite-led government may accelerate its nuclear program in retaliation. Because of the US extensive and debilitating economic sanctions to starve the Iranian population after Washington withdrew from its deal of denuclearization with their country, Iran in self-defense may be already reviving its uranium enrichment capability to develop a long-range missile that can reach the US.Currently, the US is also imposing extensive economic sanctions on Venezuela, causing great miseries among its people, in order to bring about a regime change of the Maduro government. The US wants to go back to the oilfields of this country after former president Hugo Chavez nationalized its oil industry in 2007.
The US oil industry, a leading group in the MIC, has been continuously striving to expand its control over the oil resources of the Middle East, even after becoming the dominant owners of oil companies in Iraq and Libya, following the fall of Saddam Hussein(2004) and Moamar Gadaffi(2011) in these two countries. After the hanging of Saddam, the US oil giants, Exxon-Mobile and Chevron, and British Dutch Shell were able to return to the oilfields of Iraq and the country's newly Washington-installed government forthright cancelled all oil contracts with the Russian. It must be recalled that Hussein had expelled all foreign oil companies from Iraq when he nationalized its oil industry in 1972. The US oil giants together with the French multinational oil company Total were also able to control the production of petroleum in Libya after the execution of Gadaffi in Oct. 2011. Gaddafi had also nationalized his country's oil industry in 1970. However, because of the very unstable political conditions in Libya with various local warlords fighting for control of its capital, Tripoli, after the demise of strongman Gaddafi, foreign oil productions are constantly being disrupted in this country.
Iraq is no. 5 in world oil reserves with its 149 billion barrels of crude oil and Libya is no. 9 with 48 billion barrels of crude oil. Venezuela has 300 billion barrels of crude oil reserves and is presently no. 1 in global oil reserves.Iran's 158 billion barrels of crude oil, which is no. 4 in the world, is yet another enticing territory for the US oil industry, which fuels the military capacity of the American government. (World Fact book)
But besides the oil reserves in Iran, the US MIC would benefit from a war on Iran because it can sell once again its war contraptions, e.g., jet planes, missiles, bombs, helicopters, guns, etc. to the US government. Lockheed Martin (US), Raytheon Company (US), BAE Systems (UK), Northrop Grumman (US) and Boeing (US), in that order are the 5 leading war manufacturers in the world today. These corporations have profited immensely from the continuing war of the US in the Middle-East, particularly during its invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the airstrikes in Libya in 2011.Nations making war with each other also favor the US MIC with it even supplying the war needs of two contending countries like it did during the Iraq-Iran war in the late 1980's. It was Lockheed's MK-82 bomb launched by Saudi Arabia (a leading client of the US MIC) that killed 40 children in a school bus in Yemen in 2018. (TNC Watch: Ibon International, May, 2019). The reason why US president Trump is so cozy with his friend Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the virtual ruler of Saudi Arabia, in spite of the latter's atrocious human rights violations, specially his order to butcher Washington-based journalist Jamel Khashoggi in Oct. 2018 is because this country is the leading buyer of US weapons in the Middle East. For instance, Lockheed Martin derived 94% of its total revenue in 2011 from selling war materials to the US government and globally. (people's defense.com/top-100)
US presidents, including Barrack Obama, have always served the interests of the MIC. In an interview with Steve Hilton of Fox News in May, 2019, Trump admitted that he was being pressured by the US MIC through the Pentagon to wage war against Iran. Trump's former Defense Secretary, Patrick Shananan, previously worked with Boeing for 20 years and still maintains a close influence on the Pentagon. (Real News, May 21, 2019) Obama, during his term as US president, after reducing American troops in Iraq following the fall of Saddam, escalated the US war in Afghanistan, which is still raging up to the present. Obama in his airstrikes on Libya in 2011 did not even bother to secure the US Congress approval for these actions, in violation of the US constitution. Trump's stopping the launching of an airstrike against Iran in June, 2019, is just part of the waiting game of the MIC to eventually declare war on this country. The US CIA, which plays an active role in the MIC, needs more time to surveille Iran's war capacity before the country is "obliterated" in Trump's word. The US drone's misadventure in Iran airspace was part of the CIA preliminary surveillance, which is a prelude to war. The Pentagon miscalculated the capabilities of Iran"s Revolutionary Guards to shoot down the drone as the latter were able to detect it even if it were flying 60,000 feet above ground, twice as high than a commercial plane can reach. Thus, the data that the CIA needed regarding the locations of military targets in Iran were not collected and Trump said he called off the airstrike since there might be 150 Iraquian killed if it were launched. When one knows that it was the US military that coined the term "collateral damage", meaning one cannot even avoid civilian casualty in wars, Trump is just trying to be the "good guy" in halting the airstrike and one can say to him regarding his explanation in stopping it "tell that to the Marines".
It must be noted that the MIC through the CIA has been known to manufacture events to justify the US going to war as what happened during the Tonkin Gulf incident when US ships were torpedoed by unknown forces, which the Pentagon immediately blamed on the Vietnamese leading to an escalation of US intervention in Vietnam by President Johnson in 1964. During the peak of the Vietnam war (1967-1970), the US government was spending a high annual military expenditure of $365 billion that went mostly to the MIC. (org.issues/milspend.html) The mysterious attacks against Saudi Arabian tankers in the Straits of Hormuz last May, 2019 have been attributed by the US to the Iranians, which the latter deny. One also needs to remember the claim that Iraq was manufacturing weapons of mass destruction, which was the excuse that President Bush, Jr., used to invade that country in 2003. This claim was later proven false by the UN and the CIA admitted its mistake.
John Bolton, the National Security Adviser of Trump, is an asset of the MIC in the White House. Bolton once recommended that private security forces, meaning mercenaries, like the notorious Blackwater security force which the US army made use of during the Iraq war, should be given a more extensive role in the 17-long years US war in Afghanistan, very favorable to the MIC. And besides being an avid promoter of Trump's junking of the US denuclearization deal with Iran, Bolton was also primarily responsible for Trump's decision to terminate the Intermediate Range Nuclear Treaty(INF) with Russia which has been in effect since 1987. Another hawk in Trump's inner circle is Mike Pompeo, his Secretary of State and a former CIA director, who has been egging Trump to make a so-called "limited strike" on Iran.
If war is finally waged against Iran by the Trump government, its consequences would drag American allies in Europe into the conflagration.The UK, France, even Germany may be forced to side with the US as they did during the American-led coalition against Gadaffi's Libya. Russia will back Iran as it is the leading supplier of this nations's war needs. Middle Eastern countries will also be drawn into the mire with Shiite-dominated Syria siding with Iran and Saudi-Arabia and its allies on the US side.
It is the moral duty of all Americans to oppose this looming war on Iran. All other peoples of the world must join the American masses in protesting the US government ambitions in Iran, which are being fired up by the US MIC. The US government only needs its less-privileged citizens, specially the lower-class youth, as cannon fodder in its various wars which only fatten the coffers of the MIC.( Rich kids like Donald Trump, who was exempted from serving in the Vietnam war for "bone spurs in his heels" can easily dodge being drafted into the US Armed Forces.) Just look at how the US government treats its war veterans, with thousands of them unable to find jobs again after a war leading to depressions among them which have caused, according to studies, a rise in the suicide rate in their rank. The American masses must finally unite with other peoples to put an end to all imperialist wars of plunder.
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Edberto Villegas is a retired University of the Philippines-Manila professor of development studies and political economy. A Descendant of General Miguel Malvar and a former political prisoner during the Marcos regime, He has authored several books and essays in his field of expertise and also written some literary works on the side.