A working-class approach to defense spending
Speaking Security Newsletter | Congressional Candidate Advisory Note 1 | 23 April 2020
Summary
Defense spending must be reduced. But there’s a lot of people who have no other option other than to work in the war economy. Speaking only in terms of budget cuts likely won’t appeal to them, even if they agree in principle. Arguing instead for defense conversion — transforming the war economy into a green economy (for example) — gives this constituency a positive vision, a reason to jump on board.
Situation
Over 4 million people filed for unemployment last week.[1] Meanwhile, the US military’s Space Force announced that it’s hiring and weapons manufacturers will likely receive another stimulus bailout. This speaks to a larger theme: the war economy (military-industrial complex) gets state protections; the non-war economy gets austerity and deregulation.
Take the manufacturing sector, for example. In 2015, aerospace/defense accounted for 13 percent of the US manufacturing workforce; by 2018, it occupied 20 percent. This is due to ever-increasing military budgets, sure, but it’s mostly about a cataclysmic drop in manufacturing jobs in the non-war economy:
In short: because the war economy is effectively nationalized,[2] it’s a safer option for workers who are just trying to pay the bills. For many, it’s the only option (now more than ever, it seems).
Solution
The war economy is responsible for roughly 5.7 million jobs.[3] Although a very minor share of the total US workforce, that’s still a lot of people. But this mostly state-funded project could offer far more employment opportunities if it was transformed into a better version of itself.[4] Converting public funds used on defense to literally any other purpose would do economic wonders (data/graphic from Watson Institute’s Costs of War project, more here):
Advantages
Of course, these tradeoffs can be highlighted in the same way by saying “I want to cut defense and increase spending on X”. But I think proposing to convert/transform holds some critical advantages over speaking in this way.
Mainly, it communicates that the system is already there to do whatever ‘radical’ project you’re proposing, namely:
The federal government is already the largest consumer of goods and services
The Department of Defense is already the largest employer.
In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, we see that weapons plants are already churning out facemasks and medical equipment and that the military is already doing very non-military things.[5]
All this to say: a transformation like the one I’m talking about almost seems like a natural progression at this point.
Conclusion
This was my best attempt to reconcile the need to reduce the military budget with the fact that this country’s really hard on people. I hope you found it useful.
-Stephen (stephen@securityreform.org; @stephensemler)
Footnotes
[1] Over 26 million newly-unemployed workers over the last 5 weeks. Unemployment is expected to surpass Great Depression highs, if it hasn’t happened already.
[2] Only effectively because defense contractors are private corporations, even though most of their revenue comes from US taxpayers.
[3] DOD employs ~3.2 million people (activity duty personnel, reservists, civilian employees), while DOD contracts support ~2.5 million jobs in the aerospace/defense industry.
[4] The status quo and this possibility for a brighter future can be bridged with some sort of transition coverage in case there’s any lag time between jobs. The AFL-CIO’s main objection to the Green New Deal was centered around this very issue.
[5] To be sure, this is a really problematic and inefficient way to handle a public health crisis. But that’s more about institutional deficiencies and corporate greed than it is about the actual people on the ground. This also shows that we need to transform the economy: our obsession with funding ‘national security’ imperatives have come at the expense of security for the working class.