Even as the war in Gaza rages on and the death toll surpasses 35,000, the Biden administration appears set on pursuing its vision of a Saudi-Israeli normalization deal that it sees as the path to peace in the Middle East.
But, the agreement that the administration is selling as a peace agreement that will put Palestine on the path to statehood and fundamentally transform the region ultimately amounts to a U.S. war obligation for Saudi Arabia that would also give Mohammed bin Salman nuclear technology.
As the Gaza War demonstrates, the Abraham Accords — which normalized relations between Israel and other Arab states — did not help bring peace to the Middle East. But instead of pushing for a ceasefire that could end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and limit the chances of a wider regional conflagration, Biden is pushing to continue the legacy of the Abraham Accords in a move that only increases the likelihood of American troops being sent to fight another war.
Learn more in this new video by the Quincy Institute’s Khody Akhavi:
Blaise Malley is a former reporter for Responsible Statecraft. He is also a former associate editor at The National Interest and reporter-researcher at The New Republic. His writing has appeared in The New Republic, The American Prospect, The American Conservative, and elsewhere.
Khody Akhavi is Senior Video Producer at the Quincy Institute. Previously he was Head of Video for Al-Monitor and covered the White House for Al Jazeera English, as well as produced films for the network’s flagship investigative unit.
Johnny Harris, a popular
YouTuber with nearly 6 million subscribers, published a video on Thursday that sought to answer an enormous question: “Why does the U.S. spend so much on its military”? He answers that question in extreme detail and ultimately arrives at uncovering why, in large part, the Pentagon budget is so high: the corrupt process of how lawmakers and big defense contractors and their lobbyists are all on the take.
The first half of Harris’s deep, 28 minute long dive into the U.S. military budget focuses on what the Pentagon is actually paying for, things like troops’ salaries and health care, operations and maintenance, bases, construction, and research and development. He notes that the Defense Department is so big and complex, it has
never been able to pass a financial audit.
“The U.S. is not a normal country with a regular military,” Harris says, by way of offering a kind of explanation as to why the Pentagon spends so much on all these things. “The U.S. is a global hegemon who uses its military to assert control and order over every corner of the globe,” he adds, in effect, flagging American primacy as a culprit.
“But there’s another reason why this budget is so high and this reason is much more infuriating to me,” Harris says. ”Most of this money is going to private corporations.”
Harris then spends the rest of the video breaking down our country’s corrupt procurement processes, starting with weapons companies. “We’ve got kind of a monopoly issue on our hands,” he says, noting how dozens of weapons contractors consolidated themselves down to 5 big corporations. “For this reason the prices can get pretty out of control.”
Dr. Heidi Peltier, Senior Researcher at the Watson Institute at Brown University and Director of the Costs of War Project, then tells Harris about how, because of their monopoly, weapons contractors can engage in severe
price gouging practices. “The Department of Defense has found routinely that there’s overcharging through corruption and waste and fraud,” she said, which, in part, has resulted in 40-50% profit margins.
For example, the Pentagon, Harris notes, paid Boeing $3,357 for one ball bearing, a part it could have gotten for $15. Harris then details how all the corruption works:
The big 5 contractors — Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Raytheon (now RTX) and Northrop Grumman — are “doing whatever they can to make sure the money keeps flowing to their companies” with lobbying and campaign contributions.
The revolving door: “In 2022 top defense companies hired 672 employees directly out of the Pentagon to work as lobbyists, board members and executives,” Harris says. According to Peltier: Contractors “promise a good, high paying job after that government official is out of government and so the government official has an incentive to give a generous contract to the contractor.”
Lawmakers’ profit: “To add insult to injury here, some of the lawmakers who approve the Pentagon’s budget own stocks in the defense contracting companies,” Harris says. “The lawmakers get richer if we spend more money on defense,” he adds, noting that this is a clear conflict of interest: “We should not do this. This is not a thing we should do.”
Lawmakers’ incentive for re-election: Harris then explains how defense contractors “intentionally allocate their operations all across the country” so “lawmakers are incentivized to keep these contractors making stuff in their district to provide jobs for their people so they can keep getting elected.”
Harris then highlights Sen. Roger Wicker as an example of a member of Congress who often pushes for more money for the Pentagon, which in turn goes to weapons companies, who then lobby Congress and make campaign contributions so lawmakers can tell their constituents they’re diverting federal funds to their districts to protect (or create) defense jobs:
“It is this system that has created an environment where there is very little political pushback to the endless ratcheting up of our military budget,” Harris says. Watch:
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Top image credit: Diplomacy Watch: A peace summit without Russia (RS)
The Ukrainian Defense Contract Group (UDCG or Ramstein) meeting in Germany this week has been officially postponed as President Biden bowed out to instead focus on the fallout from Hurricane Milton.
Initially planned for October 12, Ukrainian President Volodomir Zelensky was supposed to share his plans with Western policy makers and defense contractors at the meeting, saying “we will present the victory plan, clear, specific steps for a just end to the war.”
While the Ramstein summit has been postponed, Ukraine’s Western allies seem to be shifting their stances on how the war can, or should end. Former NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg recently indicated that Ukraine may have to give up some territorial integrity in exchange for peace or even NATO membership. Stoltenberg had previously explicitly ruled out any land for peace deals.
Western allies may be coming to a decision point on how they will move forward with the Ukraine-Russian war. Zelensky is regularly meeting with NATO allies, and said they are consistently affirming support, but still refusing to cross certain lines. For example, UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer reaffirmed the United Kingdom’s support for Ukraine after a meeting with the Ukrainian president on Thursday.
But when asked about allowing Ukraine to use British-made long range missiles deep into Russian territory, a spokesperson said, “We obviously want to put Ukraine in the strongest position. But no war has ever been won by a single weapon. And on Storm Shadow specifically, there has been no change to the UK government’s position on the use of long-range missiles.”
Further weapons packages and NATO assurances were likely to be approved at the Ramstein meeting, according to U.N. Secretary General Mark Rutte. ”What we need to do is to focus on what NATO can do,” he said. “What NATO can do is help to strengthen Ukraine's hands by providing enough military support. That's why I'm so happy that next Saturday we will participate in the Ramstein meeting.” Additional weapons packages were guaranteed at the previous meeting in 2023.
The postponement of this important confab is surely disappointing for Zelensky as it is preceded by Russian successes on the battlefield and a shift in opinion amongst Ukrainian soldiers and civilians around the war. Vice President Kamala Harris also recently refused to say if she would support a Ukrainian ascension into NATO if elected. Additionally, fiscal realities in Europe are shifting German and French support for Kyiv.
In other Ukraine are new this week:
On Tuesday Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said that Ukraine is not able to beat Russia on the battlefield and called for a ceasefire. Reuters reports that Hungary has also decided to place a hold on a pending $50 billion G7 loan to Ukraine until after the American election. “We don't want to block anything, we just want to convince European leaders to change their strategy (on Ukraine) because the current strategy does not work,” Orban said.
Ukraine claims to have hit a North Korean weapons cache in Russia. On Wednesday Al Jazeerareported that a Ukrainian spokesperson announced that a drone attack in Bryansk successfully destroyed this strategic weapons cache. The Ukrainian General Staff said, “the arsenal stored ammunition for missile and artillery systems, including those delivered from North Korea, as well as glide bombs.” This comes as North Korean engineers and officers are reported to be assisting Russia in the conflict.
Russia continues to make territorial gains. Last week it captured Vuhledar in Ukraine's southeast, and this week Russian troops have now entered Toretsk, a city about 50 miles north, according to the New York Times. A Ukrainian Army spokeswoman, Anastasia Bobovnikova, confirmed late Monday that Russia had entered the city.
In this week’s October 7th State department briefing:
State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller was asked about Moscow’s recentsentencing of an American citizen to prison for allegedly fighting as a mercenary in Ukraine. Miller said the United States has limited information as of now, and urges Moscow to grant consular access to him for Washington.
Miller did not answer a question concerning the report that North Koreans were killed fighting for Russia.
The Ukraine War has dragged on for nearly three years with no current end in sight. The United States' pledge to Ukraine's defense has grown increasingly costly and unpopular, and talks on both sides of escalation — and even the potential use of nuclear weapons, on the part of Russia — threaten to expand and inflate the conflict. Ukraine has defended itself admirably, but the time is now to set out a plan for negotiations and de-escalation.
In the above video, former CIA Russia Analysis Chief and Quincy Institute's Director of Grand Strategy George Beebe discusses the context and potential avenues for diplomacy with Russia.
Then if you are interested, check out the boxed set:
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