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A military or an intelligence agency embodies a concentration of power. At times, concentrations of power and their deployment may be necessary. However, a cautionary acknowledgement is that there is a potential for concentrations of power being used for unjust purposes. I take it to be an uncontroversial precautionary principle that we should bind concentrations of power with various checks and balances to minimize the possibility of their being used for unjust purposes.

With respect to the US military and intelligence agencies, such checks and balances include strong democratic accountability. Any policy regarding use of the military should be vetted by an informed public. Another check is to neutralise as far as possible any systematic pressures to deploy the military. The public (or elected representatives) may still determine that military or covert action is appropriate in a given case. However, the absence of systematic pressures to act thus would ensure that this power is only deployed when determined to be necessary.

In a series of four posts (starting with this one), I discuss various domestic US institutions that either reduce democratic accountability of the military and intelligence agencies or that create systematic pressures for their use. The four posts address the following four questions.

1. What sorts of groups are likely to benefit most from military intervention by the US Government?

2. Through which institutions are these interests able to have disproportionate influence on foreign policy?

3. Are there any institutional features that increase the likelihood of a significant component of military and covert intervention in US foreign policy?

4. Are there any institutions that reduce the ability of a relatively peaceful public majority to counter the influence of the relevant special interests?

In answering these four questions, I discuss various institutions. These include: lobbying and campaign finance pressure from defence industry and from other industries on policy makers; ‘revolving door’ appointments in the relevant industries and the relevant policy offices; the threat of reducing jobs in a congressional district; the maintenance of a proliferation of US military bases abroad; the secrecy of various intelligence and military activities of agencies in the US and the lack of oversight by congress; the poor performance of mass media; and the propaganda (or psychological operations) of the Defense Dept. These institutions operate in various ways, as distinguished by the various subheadings above. Some of the institutions create a pressure on foreign-policy makers to intervene politically or militarily, others make certain types of intervention more attractive in comparison to alternative ways to address a given problem. Some institutions make it easier for the identified special interest groups to shape policy without the critical attention of either Congress or of a significant proportion of the voting population.

So, on to the first question.

What sorts of groups are likely to benefit most from military intervention by the US Government?

Systematic pressures to deploy the military are likely to emerge from the defence industry (which supplies the government with weapons and various services in the event of military action) and from large industries (especially extractive industries) that might benefit from using covert or overt military action that secures access to natural resources or to markets in foreign lands. With respect to pressure from the defence industry, this idea of the military-industrial complex has occupied popular discourse at least since former US President Dwight Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell speech upon leaving office. With respect to pressure from extractive industries, this idea has been discussed popularly in the context of colonialism and empire.

Defense industry

Traditional defense companies make the goods of war, such as weapons, ammunition, aircraft, tanks, armoured vehicles and artillery. They also provide technical services to maintain these weapons and services such as logistics, training and communications support. The major US companies in this industry include Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, and Raytheon. These five are also among the six largest defense companies worldwide (the other being the UK company BAE Systems).

More recently, private intelligence-gathering companies have been contracted by government intelligence gathering agencies. Major such companies include Science Applications International Corporation, Booz Allen Hamilton and CACI International. The services of CACI include the provision of interrogators, four of whom have been accused of being directly or indirectly responsible for torturing prisoners in Abu Ghraib (Shorrock 2008: 281).

Private Military Contractors or PMCs offer personnel (as opposed to equipment) for combat zones. Their services include armed combat services, retired officers to provide strategic advice and military training; logistics; intelligence; maintenance services to armed forces; and tactical combat operations. Camp Doha in Kuwait, which served as the launch pad for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, was not only built by a PMC but also operated and guarded by one. Significant use of PMCs began in the early 1990s and has boomed in the 21st century (Singer 2005).

There are problems peculiar to the growing PMCs and to the intelligence gathering companies that are not shared by other aspects of the defense industry. For instance, while US military personnel are accountable to a system of laws defining acceptable conduct and to an institution for enforcing these laws, private contractors hired by the Pentagon may not be. While US intelligence agencies may be legally bound by laws circumscribing permissible spying and may be subject to established oversight institutions to enforce these laws, contracted intelligence gatherers may not be so easily bound by enforceable law and their activities may remain hidden from any oversight under the guise of a business secret.

These companies have significant interests tied to US foreign policy. Here are the revenues from defense activities for 2007 for some of the larger companies. Lockheed Martin received US$ 38.5 bil; Boeing received US$ 32 bil; Northrop Grumman US$ 24 bil; Raytheon US$ 19.8 bil. Of the intelligence gathering companies, SAIC received US$ 6.5 bil and Booz Allen Hamilton received almost US$ 3 bil (defensenews.com).

These companies have significant business deals with the US Departments of Defense and of State, and various US intelligence agencies. Insofar as covert or overt military or political intervention abroad by US government agencies require the products and services of the arms, intelligence-gathering and private contractor companies, the companies have an interest in the US government pursuing such foreign policies.

There are also ways for the defense industry to profit from US foreign policy other than by directly selling their products to the US military establishment. The companies can sell their products to the governments of other countries. An aspect of US foreign policy is its training of foreign militaries. The US State Department’s International Military Education and Training program offered military training to 133 countries in 2002 (for comparison, there are 189 member countries in the UN). Such close contact between US military instructors and foreign officers and familiarity (during training) with US-made weapons translates into an inside track in weapons sales to these foreign governments. The seller of weapons in these transactions might be the Defense Dept or private companies licensed to sell weapons by the State Dept. This is a lucrative trade. The US is the biggest seller of munitions worldwide and exported US$ 44.82 billion in arms over the period 1997-2001 (Johnson 2004: 132-3).

Non-defense industries

Various industries (often extractive industries) would like access to the natural resources of foreign countries. Cost minimising motives predispose such companies to use means at their disposal to ensure the cheapest possible access to these resources. A foreign political aspirant’s declared intention to nationalise, say, the country’s oil industry or to raise the royalties demanded for resources, would encroach on the cost minimising motive of the company. If the company C from the US competes against a company from foreign country F over access to natural resources in a third country T, C might win the access to the resources if the political regime in T is friendlier to the government of the US than to the government of F. These sorts of considerations create an interest in influencing the US government to pursue a certain type of foreign policy, to bring about a certain sort of regime in a foreign country. Let me mention two of the better known examples of such intervention.

The US and British backed coup deposing Prime Minister Mosaddeq of Iran in 1953 and US support of the ensuing dictatorship of the brutal Shah is an example of covert US action tied up with oil interests. Mosaddeq had nationalised the country’s oil industry which at the time had a significant role for British oil interests.

The United Fruit Company successfully pressured the Eisenhower government to topple democratically elected President Arbenz of Guatemala via the CIA in 1954. Arbenz’s agrarian reform agenda was set to hurt the Company’s interests which included large landholdings in the country.

References:

Johnson, Chalmers; 2004; The sorrows of empire; Verso; London

Shorrock, Tim; 2008; Spies for Hire; Simon &Schuster

Singer, Peter W.; 2005; “Outsourcing the war”; The Brookings Institution; accessed at http://www.brookings.edu/articles/2005/0301usdepartmentofdefense_singer.aspx on 10 May 2009