Eve since I can remember, there has been a debate about money that we spend for “defense” versus money that is spent for domestic needs–the classic “guns v. butter” issue. Frankly, most of the labor movement has not played a great role in that debate, either because of a sense of patriotism or, more likely, because of a belief that defense projects meant jobs.
Sure, defense surely means jobs–but at what cost? An editorial in today’s New York Times made me thing of this issue over my morning cup of tea. While it says that Congress should appropriate money for the Iraq occupation (since the paper has been such an early supporter of this moronic war, how could it not?), it uses the submission of the president’s budget yesterday as a point of departure to criticize a lot of wasteful defense spending:
Congress should direct particular attention to the roughly $140 billion in weapons procurement, research and development costs that are not part of the Iraq and Afghanistan section of the budget. Far too many of these programs are products of cold war strategic thinking and have outlived their rationale in a world with no superpower arms race.
That includes the $4.6 billion slated for the Air Force’s F-22 stealth fighter, the $2.6 billion for the Marine Corps’ tilt-wing V-22 Osprey, the $3 billion for the Navy’s DDG-1000 stealth destroyer and $2.5 billion for the Virginia-class attack submarine. It also includes much of the $15.9 billion going to space weapons and missile defense.
Several of these programs can be canceled outright. The F-22 is one of three new-generation stealth fighters, and the most expendable because it was originally designed for air-to-air combat against Soviet-style MIG fighters. Likewise, the Virginia-class submarine was designed to track enemy nuclear submarines. The DDG-1000 is a blue-water fighting fortress, when what the Navy really needs these days is smaller, faster ships that can operate in shallow coastal waters.
It would be a good time for the labor movement, as a whole, to put its stamp on this debate. The things we lobby for–national health care, for example–could easily paid for if we turned away from what is a bloated defense budget (yes, obviously, as I’ve written many times before, we could also fund important domestic priorities of the rich weren’t stealing away with huge piles of money (read: tax cuts). But, if we see our situation in the world as part of a big picture, we can’t simply say, “fix all the bad stuff but keep underwriting the kinds of programs that make the word a more miserable place to live.”
I’m not suggesting that the people who have defense-related jobs just be tossed out of work. But, there have been many efforts to model defense conversion so that we transition away from such a heavy dependence on the military budget (which has been pointed out before does not give one the greatest bang for the buck–no pun intended–in terms of job creation and, of course, job stability). Maybe the crazy insanity of the Iraq war will spur more debate on this issue–though I fear that will not be the case given the rhetoric from all political corners about the need to wage “the war on terror” at any cost.
