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Read, Debate: Engage.
Since his victory has been announced last month, president-elect Biden has faced mounting pressure from the left to reverse course on the long-standing liberal national security agenda which, under former President Obama, saw the exponential expansion of the Pentagon’s budget and America’s involvement in wars overseas. But his picks for top national security positions in his future cabinet have concerned many in the progressive movement, who alluded to the nominees’ hawkish background and their direct ties to the defense industry.
From his secretary of state-designate Anthony Blinken and future director of national intelligence Avril Haines to the three finalists now considered for the lucrative Defense Secretary position, Biden’s national security picks signal the incoming administration’s intention to perpetuate a belligerent military policy that exacerbates the military-industrial complex and keeps the nation engaged in ‘forever wars’ with zero consideration of the human and environmental tolls exacted by them.
Although Biden has pledged in his plan to “end the forever wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East, which have cost us untold blood and treasure,” he nonetheless, in the same breath, has vowed to make “necessary” investments to bolster the US military capabilities, withdraw only “a majority” of troops from Afghanistan, and maintain the army’s presence abroad. In the eyes of many progressives, such proclamations, combined with the nominations of individuals with an interventionist pedigree when it comes to national security and cozy ties to the arms industry, indicate that the Biden administration will stray very little, if at all, from the US military agenda of the past several decades.
Of particular concern to progressives and those who wish to see a shrinking of the Pentagon’s budget and influence over the government is the prospective candidate for defense secretary - Michele Flournoy. A former undersecretary of defense for policy under the Obama administration, Flournoy has spent the majority of her career zigzagging between Pentagon posts and lucrative positions at defense industry think-tanks and consultancy firms. Flournoy has co-founded her own “secretive” consultancy firm WestExec in 2017, which effectively markets security corporations’ products to the Pentagon and other defense entities. Flournoy has also reportedly supported Obama’s expansion of troops in Afghanistan and increased arms sales to Saudi Arabia while serving on the board of directors of a Pentagon contractor that possibly benefitted from such moves.
Flournoy is far from being the only national security staffer on Biden’s list with direct ties to the defense industry. In fact, a close look at the president-elect’s burgeoning cabinet reveals a cohort of individuals that are part of what has come to be known as the Pentagon’s “revolving door”: a steady flow of people between the defense department and arms industry who perpetuate the latter’s relentless grip on government and undue influence on foreign and defense policies; in other words, they guarantee the survival of the military-industrial complex in the US. Blinken (Biden’s pick for secretary of state ) is also a co-founder of WestExec, and Avril Haines (incoming director of national intelligence) served as one of its consultants. Haines is also serving on the board of directors of the Center for New American Security - a think-tank co-founded by Flournoy that is mired in controversy over its ties to the data-mining firm Planatir, according to The Intercept.
In a letter from 10 November, 2020, Congress members Barbara Lee and Mark Pocan explicitly asked Biden to ensure “that the next Secretary of Defense have no prior employment history with a defense contractor.” Over the past few weeks, numerous experts and leaders on the left joined Lee and Pocan’s demand, and further emphasised the importance of reducing the Pentagon’s budget in order to both scale down US military involvement abroad and finance Biden’s ambitious agendas at home.
Should Biden continue to nominate individuals with ties to defense contractors, it can be presumed that the Pentagon will incur no budget cuts under his administration. Still, some remain optimistic that Biden will herald in an era of reduced military action across the world. In an interview for The Intercept, Heather Brandon-Smith, the legislative director for militarism and human rights for the Friends Committee on National Legislation, referred to the possibility that Biden will abolish the 2002 Iraq Authorization for Use of Military Force, stating that “I am quite optimistic that, even possibly as a first 100 days achievement, we could see the repeal of the 2002 Iraq AUMF [...] I’m hopeful that the Biden administration will see it as an outdated, unnecessary authorization that remains open to future abuse. It could be a first step to ending forever wars.”
Another possible check on the Pentagon could emanate from the Congressional Foreign Affairs Committee. Currently, an in-house race is underway over the leadership of the committee, with progressive congress member Juaquin Castro hoping to win the position. Should he be elected as chair of the committee, Castro could wield influence over defense issues by pushing for budget reductions, increased scrutiny, prohibition of arms sales, and holding hawkish individuals accountable for their crimes.
According to Amnesty International, US wars abroad have thus far cost the lives of over 800,000 people worldwide and of more than 7,000 American service men and women. It is incumbent upon the American public and leadership to pressure the incoming president to do all in his power to end this ongoing tragedy and terminate, once and for all, the bloody military-industrial complex.
Imagw by PHC D. W. HOLMES II, US Navy
