There’s been a lot of hopium from many for months, a year or more now about how the west entirely exported its MOP and because of greed of the arms manufacturers who are privately held cannot hope to increase production because they demand guarantees of profits into the future and HERE WE ARE. They are being given those guarantees or the first steps of them.
Western defense spending will remain high for years to come to counter Russia and China, a US official has told weapons makers
The US and its allies are planning to continue ramping up defense spending, which will ensure long-term demand for weapons, US Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks told a gathering of arms manufacturers during a NATO event on Tuesday.
Speaking at the NATO Summit Defense Industry Forum, the official praised NATO members for boosting their military budgets since the initial flare-up of the Ukraine conflict in 2014, and particularly after the open hostilities between Ukraine and Russia erupted in 2022. Over the past decade, the average annual increase in spending was 72%, adjusted for inflation, she said.
That reversed a period when “defense industries across the Atlantic were affected by decades of inconsistent funding and blinkered demand signals,” she said. She said the current thinking is: “Production matters. Production is deterrence.”
Western arms manufacturers have the ability “not just to compete, but to out-compete and prevail” over Russia and other nations that the US considers its rivals, including China, North Korea and Iran.
“That includes ensuring we are prepared for the possibility of protracted war, which every ally must be prepared for – and not just in Europe, either,” Hicks warned.
Developing the manufacturing base on both sides of the Atlantic in a way that combines “information-age ingenuity and industrial-era capacity” will benefit US allies in the Pacific, such as Australia, Japan and South Korea, the official said.
She claimed that Western political systems are inherently beneficial for building “arsenals of democracy,” since they foster innovation and transnational cooperation. On the other hand, “autocracies,” according to her reasoning, can’t move beyond “just landing at each other’s airfields, or sailing ships alongside each other for a few days at a time.”
The Pentagon is looking for ways “to be a better customer,” Hicks said, by streamlining its internal processes, delivering targeted investments in the defense sector, and providing security services to weapons businesses.
I think it’s important to point out common misconceptions that many in the anti-imperialist left cling to, hope is nice, but the reality is better even if it’s not very inspiring and even depressing.
They have no other choice, no way out, war-mongering, domination-demanding Euro-American world empire has been a product in the works for centuries and they’re not about to let it go because of a few set-backs or give up in their deranged beliefs that they should dictate to the world how things should work or that they are in fact benevolent for imposing these things on the world.
So they are going to double down and much as we might hope for it I think they’ll be able to inflict some real pain on China in a few years when they go to war with it. A complete defeat on Chinese soil is not needed, merely to bruise them, humiliate them on the west’s preset terms of what that means and be able to throw up a deep ocean island chain blockade on China and thump their chests. I think the actual results will be rather limited but they just need the appearance of a win in their media. I just worry about that limited conditions not being met and things spiraling into nuclear war. I definitely think they’d rather blow up the planet than accept loss of hegemony, certainly the arms manufacturers, the industrial bourgeoisie who remain in the west have that kind of mindset.
Yes there are still headwinds against the west in many places, corrupt practices, bad airplanes but they had the high ground to begin with, a better starting position so can afford some of that with their built-in advantages.
Demand is great, but China still controls all the supply. The west will have trouble generating alternative supplies. Probably occupied korea and japan are the only viable industrial powers to arm the west. The US and EU could but the political will to execute on building factories and domestic supply chains has yet to be seen.
And they’re far too close to China, Russia, and the DPRK in a hot war. The US might not care about it’s proxies’ lives but it can’t operate without them.
They can build all the weapons they want, but unless they find more countries the size of Grenada or Panama to “fight”, they will still lose. See Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan for reference.
The paper tiger cannot change its stripes.
And the paper crumbles before even the rain can wash those stripes off.
I think we’re just being realistic. The “hopium” is coming from these NATO clowns who keep making these big boasts and optimistic claims about boosting production but we have not seen them be able to deliver on their promises. Just recently the Europeans had to admit that their actual munition production numbers weren’t even close to what they claimed they could achieve.
So i don’t know why we should all of a sudden take them at their word that this time around it will be different. Maybe they are even convinced of it, but these people are just not rooted in reality. They miscalculate again and again because they are arrogant, they overestimate their own capabilities and underestimate those of their enemies, for ideological reasons.
We should not be complacent and expect the fall to be inevitable - on that, I’d agree with the tone of your thoughts on this.
But, defense spending does not automatically translate to material improvements. Consider this for some perspective on the state of the US military, for example: https://indi.ca/nothing-to-see-here-just-the-wheels-falling-off-empire/
Couple quotes from it:
America had a strong military generations ago, but those assets have long since depreciated and become liabilities. They keep covering this up by buying shiny new stuff, but that stuff doesn’t even work and it’s all depreciating into dust and fairy dust as we speak.
Maintenance, however, is a compounding liability. The less you do it, the more you have to do. Just ask my old Vitz, which never went for regular service until it just melted on the highway and required a hideous engine rebuild. It cost me more than regular maintenance and I never trusted that car again. This is the basic rule of maintenance. You neglect it at your peril. As the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) says about not doing maintenance, “Over time this situation has resulted in worsening ship conditions and increased costs to repair and sustain ships.” And it’s not just ships, the entire ‘capital’ base of the US military is literally being cannibalized.
Every barracks is crumbling and full of black mold. The Public-Private Venture military family housing is in bad shape, because the Private part just hoovers up profits and never does real maintenance. The combination of PPV off-base housing, crumbling government owned and operated barracks, overpriced (and soon-to-be-crumbling) PPV single housing that the mid-grade enlisted personnel flock to as they flee their mold-infested barracks, too few crumbling security gates, and zero public transit conspire to make just the act of getting to work on a base a several hour endeavor, especially at the large bases. Hell, an enemy of the US could cripple its military right before an attack with just a couple of car accidents.
To put it simply, the west is not capable of actually building their productive forced back up. It is impossible at this stage of capitalism. The money MUST flow to the top. The oligarchy at this point will NEVER take the loss in wealth that would be needed to rebuild a mode of production that would make them able to rival China. At this stage, the decline in the western imperialism will continue to outpace its ability to try to build it’s productive forced back. All this is is chest beating and blistering for one purpose. Keeping faith in the companies that make bank off the defense budget. Gotta pump those stocks. That’s what this is really all about. Stocks and assets. It’s what’s it’s always about. The people making these big, grandiose statements… They are the shit ass CEO of my company that’s currently tanking due to mismanagement and incompetence at the top. But when the company town hall happens you’d thing we were an SP500 mega corp. It’s all bluster. It’s all the “80s business guy” from Futurama.
So they are going to double down and much as we might hope for it I think they’ll be able to inflict some real pain on China in a few years when they go to war with it.
As someone living in an imperial core myself- I hope that China, Russia, and the rest of the global south, makes sure to give as good as it gets when push comes to shove in the upcoming war. The world is done with western terrorism, which has remained unchanged and unrepentant for over 500 years; this time around, when all is said and done fascism and imperialism must be eradicated in its entirety, no matter how strenuous the measures in doing so may be.
And if the western elites truly try to blow up the planet- which frankly I think we’re headed towards- I hope that the rest of the world is fully committed when the time comes. Bring on the nukes; hell, bring on the biological weapons, bring on the dirty bombs, the only thing worse than the world being destroyed would be these monsters triumphing yet again over it.
Sad SadArtemis. Sadly unninformed and brainwashed.
blinkered demand signals
Read: “Europe needs war on its doorstep to see clearly that it should listen to the US”
Western arms manufacturers have the ability “not just to compete, but to out-compete and prevail” over Russia and other nations that the US considers its rivals, including China, North Korea and Iran.
This is the funniest thing I’ve heard in a long while. The west has the people and the resources but not the political economy. If it shifts to a different political economy, it’s already lost so what’s the point.
WW3 it is then. They can’t win but they will try to get as many people killed as possible anyway.
